Just make sure i have the right one is last call at the Hotel Imperial. The reporters who took on a world at war in conversation with peter slevin and deborah cohen. Deborah and peters books will be available for sale and signing at the book sale and signings tent. An availableforsale and signing at the book sale and sign tent and right side of this building you will see a tent and it is marked in and so they will be available in meeting the afterwards. We also askedyo during the q a time you please use the standing mic here and also a note that this presentation will be recorded by cspan. Deborah cohen is the professor of history at northwestern university. Her previous books include household god, the war come home and family secrets. She writes regularly for the atlantic on subjects ranging from punk rock to world war i photography. Our moderator is a contributing writer to the new yorker and a professor at Northwestern School of journalism. He spent aos decade on washingn post national staff, and seven years as the european correspondent of the miami herald. Ch he is the author of michelle obama, a life. Please join me in welcoming our distinguished guests today. [applause] thank you. Thank you so much for thatks at thanks everyone for being here. Ive been looking forward to this for many weeks. This is a wonderful book. Its both intricate and clarifying which is a rare feat, purely britain and really quite riveting about a time between the wars in europe when some of the momentous events in the 20th century were unfolding and watching this and telling the stories back here. With these remarkable rather crew of reporters who deborah has discovered and shes escalated their lives, both their personal lives and their professional lives. Id love to stop asking about that contrast. You had this moment inth the 19s and 30s when the world is changing. The bolsheviks have come too power in the soviet union. World war i is over. World war ii may be brewing. The rise of s hitler, the rise f mussolini,i, the stock market crash. You focused not the one Winston Churchill or in the journalism world on Edward Murrow or even William Scheidler but these four rather unknown to us now journalists. How did you discover them and choose to spend these tales . So first of all thank you so much, peter come for joining me. It truly opposed to be able to be conversation with you at thanks of a straight one for being here. And so i actually knew this group of people at least a couple of them because the books of john gunther were on my parents and probably also a number of other maybe those of you ines the audience shelves as well. He had more bestsellers, american bestsellers that any author other than the romance novelist from the mid 1930s to the end ofif the 50s. So it used to be you could walk into a a used bookstore withot saying a john gunther book. An Vincent Sheean had written a book in 1935 called personal history that was one of these kind of era defining books, and my father was born in 1930, itd been one of his favorite books. So i chose to focus on a group of american reporters, two of whom whom had actually worked for chicago papers, but all of whom had come from small towns and midwestern cities, and one of them from texas, and that shot off to europe and asia in the early 1920s. And there they would become really the most influential reporters of their day. Shire does it would make his work of the Second World War after it comes same thing with murrow. If youre looking for who was really important in bringing the news home to millions of americans in the 1920s, the 1930s, it was it was this group of folks. And let me just say who they were. So john gunther ive mentioned. Vincent or jimmy sheehan, Dorothy Thompson and mna h. R. Knickerbocker. Note to one as all as nick, possibly inevitably. They did not emerge from these east coast. Did not emerge from the ivy league. He did not have pedigrees at all. Where did they come from . Tell us all been a bit abod then what they brought because of that experience to these momentous events. Yeah, they were outsiders. So they were not people who were born to rule in any sense. John gunther grew up on wellington avenue in chicago which is actually where i live, too. Vincent sheean was raised in the small mining town which at that point had a population of 7500 in southeastern illinois. Southwestern illinois. Dorothy thompson was born administers a daughter in a sl town outside of buffalo, and h. R. Knickerbocker grew up in yoakum texas. So what did they get from that experience . They were people who really understood what the people back home needed to know and what were the strategies of reporting that would interest them . So they had a finally green since in this is true not just of the crowd the last crew but i think also of the big interwar reporters of the air like Eric Sevareid or merle or edgar and paul mowrer who grewmi up in bloomington illinois. So they knew what their neighbors back home wanted to know. The joke was that they knew how to speak to people who thought the prague was a sort of a ham, and they were reporting their reporting tended to be much more focused on the kinds of almost tabloid subjects like politicians personal lives, john gunther became famous for reporting an inside joke published19 in 1936 on the kindf psychodynamics of hitlers upbringing, or the kind of relationships thatre mussolini d with women. So those were the kinds of things they thought that the neighbors, that would make them snapped to attention. The way the operator is so intriguing and id love to have occurred here how you peace her story together but before we get to that, that notion that they had a deal for what audiences wanted long before focus groups and metrics that we have in our news organizations t today. They like interviews. They like to go find the people who were in power and find out about them. You have guenther anything trotsky and georgia. Hes going with uncaring correspondent in search of hitlers relatives and found them. I think thompson and nick interviewed hitler. That was something european correspondent a little bit, didnt they . For european correspondent that the lobe of less british but id say european correspondent that was a less elevated way that you were to try to get the news. Where as i said these people come so the people im talking about a group on bigcity papers. Thats what they were cub reporters like the Chicago Daily news or the tribune, and they knew how to report on gangsters and on bigcity bosses and what they really liked was the sense of trying to take the measure of the man. And, of course, one of the subjects they were reporting on were rising dictators who all seem to be all surface picky student in the newsreels. You see them there sort of polished perfection of the uniforms. You see all of the crowds in the stadiums saluting you and so the idea was heres a way to get to the essence of this person, which is sit down with them, y to crack the facade and see behind the man i love the store you tell in last call about nick going to interview hitler, which i i would imagine was a tough interview to get. He sits with him and hitler is stressed in a rather dressed up i guess you could say, and you write that nick wrote that he seemed like a rising young District Attorney in a in a secondclass county in texas. Easily dismissed, and then, however, except once hitler began to talk, youre right, he turned out to be rather impressive come far from it. The man with the dangerous demagogue. And thompson having metet him cl them an agitator of genius. So sitting down with them actually did change their stories that sounds like . I think it did. I think the thing about, and we can see this w in her own time with the emphasis onbi the big personalities, the putin or zelensky. One of the problems is when you approach the news do these people who are sometimes only you can see, i mean, you get a much more about that, its a difficult toug gauge Public Opinion in the country where opinion is not free and theres no really free press, and that wasou a case across much of central and Eastern Europe by the 30s. But one of the things that they do is, right, they sit down with these men butso they also make some really big gaffes. So knickerbocker totally understands hitler. He sees him for like the racing district da, District Attorney in some small that in texas, but when he sits down with mussolini he is actually really quite impressed by him. First of all mussolini is a charmer. He is not the kind of prussian store of stack of dictator type. Mussolini is really well informed or if you want to understand the calculations aboutt recovering from the great depression, mussolini is a guy you talk to. And mussolini aer former reportr himself loves to charm foreign reporters and so theyre having history intricate psychological game between them that actually makes knickerbocker think you know i wouldnt say this but any of the country but maybe in a place like italy i divided backward country like italy, mussolini is exactly the ticket. And you know he changes his mind eventually but for a very long time knickerbocker key sense is the english, the british and french have to keep mussolini on their side. They had to keep mussolini and hitler from forming any kind of an alliance together. And if im not mistaken, Dorothy Thompson at first thought hitler might not be the worst thing. Would end up with the Coalition Government. She did not early on for see any of the things that happened which gives a sense of these relatively inexperienced in Foreign Affairs journalists dealing their way. Is that what you totally yes. This is a part of the book that it. Wanted to reserve for the reader, which is we tell our history backward. Were trying to explain what we know is the endpoint but here are smart, ambitious, aggressive people who are plopped down in the midst of events that are really difficult to figure out. They are living really in the thick of things. Theres a huge burden on them to try to predict correctly what is going to happen, and they make mistakes. Or as Dorothy Thompson says it doesnt matter ifet you get lonr first time so long as you get it right the secondhe time, or the third time. So yes, Dorothy Thompson we should sit hitler she thinks how could a man like this actually rule a nation like germany . This is ultimately even if he comes to power he will be crushed in a Coalition Government by people who are able to outfoxed him. And as i said, as others say it say terrible gaffe, a huge mistake on the other hand, she came home she became one of the most vehement agitators calling attention to the rise of fascism across europe through the rest of the 1930s. It may not i come, and may nt be a a surprise to anyone in e audience as i was reading this story about these journalists trying to see into the future, trying to look at their crystal balls and the wolves can happen in europe through mussolini and hitler and whether russians would fit in, i was thinking about 2015 and 2016, and how journalists hadt to decide what to doum with donald trump. And we know how that story went and how manyw different paths there were and what we know now versus event. I love the notion that we tell history backward. We know how it turned out. In this case, each of these journalists went through something of a transformation in their approach. In their conclusions. And so by the end of the 30s they had really come to decide whether to take sides and what to say about what they knew. Just exactly. The dilemma we think about is running through reporting today is the object come socalled objectivity question, otherwise known as the view from everywhere, or both sides is. Meaning if you report without taking, without in some ways declaring your opinion, are you misleading r readers . He goes k your leading them to kind of put all information on the same plane. This is exactly the dilemma that was posed to these reporters in the 20s and 30s, which is to what extent should they take sides . They had all been raised in the newsrooms of the early 20s were objectivity again was enthroned. The reaction of the respectable papers like the Chicago Daily news against the hearst papers for the yellow press. And yet they go to europe, they go to asia, and that confidence that they have in both sides being fair and how you can be there begins to break down because they realize as they can fund the rise of dictatorship or they confront us agents that are just lying toat them, that you cant report the handouts thatbe youre being given come the chapter take sides and foreign correspondence in the United States always had more latitude to actually put an interpretation without their opinion, if that makes any sense, on the reporting at this time. So that was an avid into doing this, but they ended up really as full throated partisans. So just to give an example Dorothy Thompson becomes an opinion columnist here shes a firstop woman political opinion columnist from the late 1930s. Vincent sheean becomes one of theav most avid partisans for te antiimperial cause. So he goes to israel, and so i come he palestine in 1929 and is there for the rise of the western wall and essentially says zionism is just another form of imperialism. This is despite h the fact hes been sent there by zionist press organization. All of them find themselves in a situation where unless they declare themselves, unless they show the reader the world through their eyes they felt that theyre not doing their job. Theres a remarkable moment where gunther ideally is sending back so many stories on a particular topic that is editor in chicago says please, can we find a little more better news . Tell us that, this great detail but you felt. Gunther is there in berlin in 1933 after the nazi, nazis come to power for hitler, becomes the chancellor in late january 1833 and almost immediately there are these brown houses, as they are known, brownth after the color f the fascist uniforms were in any of the regime social communist jews,ro professors, are being beaten up in these places. Dorothy thompson is in i their reporting, and she goes to the casualty wards of hospitals and tries with our european colleagues to try to figure out how many people have been murdered. John gunther comes and hes o reporting. The chicago giving news was a liberal paper, and yet gunther is sending back so much a news of nazi atrocities that is editor to Chicago Daily news says we cant just run stories from germany aboutut nazi atrocities. You need to actually send this mother stories. I think as we consider the degree to which americans, what americans knew about the nazi campaigned against the jews, about the plan to exterminate european jewry, these reporters actually paid a really, really crucial role. They are sending that news here the fact that it doesnt get reported is sometimes late at the feet, should be the late at the feet of editor. Editors are the bane of every reporters existence, are they not . [laughing] i have been saved by many and other. I say that as an aside. One of the things that so remarkable about your book is how you almost with inside the heads of these characters, and you write with Great Authority but the authority is backed up by rather extraordinary bits of evidence. Tell us were all that came from. Yes. So that is one of the things that was captivating to me about this group of people, which is that they had left hundreds and hundreds of boxes archives that put you squarely in the middle of the action. Within the 258 more than 250 boxes at the universityf of chicago just at the counter papers alone, and then thompson has hundreds more boxes. Jimmy was a character soviet boxes scattered around the world all over the place when he left stuff. H. R. Knickerbocker is somewhat smaller collection reasons youll see in the book. But what those archives did for me really were two things. One of them is they contained all their notes. So as gunther is interviewing trotsky, you have notes that hes writing down about his impressions of the man, and so you can seeto the story actuall, you are there, right there on the spot with him. Incredible. But then you see another thing which is a huge amount of this archive is devoted to inner life hurts its not just him interviewing trotsky. Its also am writing about his marriage and itsts him writing about his love affair with his best friends wife. So its him writing about his insecurities. And so these were archives. Its like the officer a pandoras box which is like letting them out. I opened up the archives and was sucked in. I kind of emerged many years later, but they put you in the center of dilemmas that people were really experiencing after that first sexual revolution of the 1920s. So not only are they a way of telling a story about reporting and authoritarianism, anticolonialism, the coming of the war but also a way of telling a history of private life that is otherwise incredibly difficult of access for good reason. People throw away the stuff. They burn the diaries. They threw away the letters. Here they were all preserved in the reason was because all of this group of people felt that the was an intrinsic connection between the geopolitical events that they were reporting on and the way that those events were coming to kind of almost be rooted to take a kind of place in their soul come in the relationship, that they were permeable to the universe. Sometimes quite literally so. Jimmy sheean thinks that he is a kind of finely honed lightning rod, orrk tuning fork. He feels like he convinces but what is going to happen because theres no barrier between himself and the events of the world. Whats wonderful is, are the ways you in a week the personal and professional with these world events. As you embarked what did you think your book would be about . So i threw away a version of this book. I wrote probably some 100 or so pages. So whatbe i was hoping to do because i thought these archives speeded to be clear you started with 100 paged and it said no, its a different book . I started with 100 pages and to thought well actually i was very please pleased with them of course, as you are, and i gave it to my agent i think and to a friend and everyone was totally bewildered, like i dont get what youre doing here. So i do that all away. What i was trying to do was because i thought heres a chance to actually tell history because of this extraordinary documentation literally through their eyes without any intervention from the historian who is going to guide you along. But that ultimately didnt work. I needed to come back and refashion what i had done and really profoundly we think it. It was always a story that i knew would have the kind of big geopolitical events, which i hoped would be reinterpreted in some ways for readers so that you would see when you see the world as they see it it actually looks quite different. So events in austria in 1934, for instance, as the austrian dictator fires on on a sociat housing projects destroy them. Austrian civil war, come to be much more significant in the way that we tell the story of the 20s and 30s. So doesc anticolonialism. Ikn would always have those geopolitical events. I knew i would have the kind of inner life stories, the personal story and the knew i would have the work and it was just always a question of managing the balance between them. Your story about having to start over as a lesson to all of us and reminder to all of us that some wonderful things start off sometimes on the wrong track. Im reminded off a colleague who wrote a a book that went on te terrificallyly successful. She submitted her manuscript with great pride and little trepidation to editor in new york, and she waited and you waited and he will back and he said you have a very good book here. Its not this book. Please start over. Which she did. Its in many printings but sometimes that does happen. I have another friend who wrote the book that was also asked he was successful andle his editor cut out 80,000 d words, problem im sure that you did not have. Thankfully, i mean im trying, i felt i couldve written another 100,000 o that wouldve been illadvised. I think that happens to everyone who writes a book oftentimes you finish it and you think one now i couldve written just another book. And one wants always to go back and redo it and it did have a chance in w some ways. At thehe time i was unhappy. As your characters are exploring their inner lives and, of course, applying thatar to te work, you are with them doing the same because you access to these voluminous diaries, notes of all kinds. One thing that emerges is the rise of psychoanalysis, which you choose to make a part of the story about them. Tell us about that. This is a crucial part of their story, which is that they all come of age as young people in t the 1920s at a moment when psychoanalysis and the enthusiasm about floyds ideas is moving from the kind of bohemian young circles, the useful circles of which they are part urban settings, more broadly to the United States. So much so that a book called how to psycho analyze your neighbors will become a bestseller in the 1930s, being printed into theil millions. So psychoanalysis becomes part of the mental furniture of americans lives in this period, in the 20s and 30s. And it really crucial as you might guess to john gunther efforts and inside europe to try to psycho analyze in some ways the dictators, to try to understand m who are these peop, what is made in the way that they are. Freud limited himself to the individual with a few exceptions. What they were doing of course was taking freudian ideas and then trying to understand how that, what does it look like, this collective with lots and lots of people. So not only are a number of these people in psychoanalysis, a part of story of 1934 in vienna that i was telling you plays out against john gunther own psychoanalysis with the man who was one of fords First Student admin broke with freud for decisively. So otherser being analyze as all hell is breaking loose in austria in 1934 pick so thats part of street within its more broadly how is it that people began to think about in her life . How is it that they come to reckon with the ways in which inner life is translated into geopolitics . And they had an inner life. They had an outer life that often with will. Be on the daily duties. I was struck by how much time to think of when they were not filing which is a different from today. Tell us about the place that is in the title. The Hotel Imperial. So thehe Hotel Imperial is still in vienna, one of the fanciest hotels. It was the fancy hotel in this era. It was a place where if you were invited to a ball of habsburgs it would oftentimes be, might be taking place in the ballroom at the Hotel Imperial. Its important to the book for three reasons. First off all because it was a reporters hang out. It was a place where you went to get the down low information as if you are john gunther, you are eating your hand on poppyseed rolls for breakfast. Everyone all these people who are becoming of the war went to pay their goodbyes to vienna come tot say goodbye to vienna, the vienna they had to opaque glass cost of Hotel Imperial among other places, and then finally when the german tanks rolled over the austrian border it was to the Hotel Imperial that hitler himself came, and he set up his operations in the first four of the Hotel Imperial just up the staircase somewhere the reporters had once hung out. And that was because hitler as a young man, the impoverished artists, the house painter had been shoveling snow for some extra money outside of the Hotel Imperial watching all the fancy people come in while he himself is shipping outside come the classic image of the excluded. He doesnt set up a shop in the chancellery building. He go straight to the Hotel Imperial, a symbolic location in other words,. And these edicts are downright cinematic in your telling people coming and going and trading information. It sure sounds like a bygone era. Yes. As you say they seem to have a lot of time because they have affairs, they have, they write novels. The whole novels, john gunther writes three 04 novels while he is being a reporter compiling a deadline. They have superhuman energy, ambition, tribe, strength. And they stay up late into the night drinking at the cafe, in the unit or the hotel in berlin. This is something you should set a course reporters do that, continue to do that. But you can almost in part because they write such great notes about you can almost feel the kinds of information youre going to get there when you were sitting. Reporters do that to some extent but now we are tethered to the desk at all times and everybody else through these little phones that we carry. I was struck by the fact these reporters which seemingly disappear from the site other editors for weeks at a time. That would not happen, months at a time, that would not happen i am sure. They go off and editors think they are dead. Jimmy sheean goes off across the bella in Northern Africa what is now morocco and his editor thinks he is actually probably dead because nothing has been heard from him. I want to open to questions in a few minutes, but before i do that, continuing this idea that these lives seemed rather exotic. There are cameos of all kinds of other people whom you may want to mention, and scenes that didnt happen now. I am sure the cnn reporter would not, for example, on a the rivia you tell us of a gathering hosted by jimmy and his wife in 1937. Winston churchill is there. He sets up shop there for a while and appears in his red bathrobe. As did the former king kind the eighth as ael new, queen elizabeth, the late Queen Elizabeths uncle. Jimmy is in the bad mood. Why . Because hemingway, he just had a conversation with hemingway and jimmy editor said you cant go to spain, youre too sick. Hemingway is going. He was resentful that hemingway is going to go, and you write and i just love the rhythm of the language. Was too much getting about, too much super nu waited high society, too much drinking, to little purpose. And you go on from there. Dorothy put it to him directly what you saw him later that year in new york, you are at a point where you must decide, what is it . It is thing he told her. I want to go to spain. He goes to spain travel with hemingway. Jim as well. Yes. Ii mean, they live right in the middle of every bluechip celebrity that you can possibly imagine. So with that particular gatheringie hosted on the riviea this is when jimmy is in a bad mood because his wifes aunt who herself was a sort of glorious star of the stage, and its, shes gathered together all of these celebrities and is listening to them and the conversation there having into why am i wasting my life with this kind of nonsense . Jimmy also writes the memoirs of depose duchesses, sort of romanoff people sitting around in paris in budapest. Dorothy thompsonn borrows money from freud jimmy who is always broke borrows money from churchill. So theres a sense, francis guenther who is john gunther is first wife has a friendship and maybe some kind of come much more intense love affair with the nationalist leader in Indian National leader, the first primers of india. Theres a sense everyone is seeking them out. Everyone wants to influence the american press. Everyone finds of them compelling. All of these people find them quite compelling characters and lesss of course remember of the British Press in which they are totally annoyed because they get to go to churchills house for the weekends, and otherwise toasted. Everyone wants to know about themey or reading a book and so because they are pretty much captivating. I want to ask one more question before open it up. I hope you have some thoughts for deborah. Women in the book. Dorothy thompson is a force, an absolute force. Yet shes married to a Nobel Prize Winner whom folks in the audience will know. And then francis guenther whom you just mentioned having this rather intriguing relationship is unable or seems to do our own work and yet without her in a reading the book john gunther wouldve been a fraction of what he was. Tell us about these women. That is sort ofha what john gunther thought. He credited francis with all the best ideas. This is a first generation of american women who have been University Educator in nearly equal numbers to their male counterparts. They are working in a field that is a relatively new field for americans in the sense that foreign correspondence is being formed in the modern way at exactly this moment. And there are a number of women, its notable how Many American women count among the celebrities in foreign correspondence. So theres Dorothy Thompson. Theres virginia, theres emily hahn at the the new yorker. Theres janet atd the new yorkr and on and on and on. This is totally unlike what is happening in britain where women can barely get a sort of peek into the corridors of power. So what i say in the book is to paraphrase something thatn the literary critic lisa cohen says in a really amazing book about female failure and modernism called all we know. Rs this is a first group of women who can actually fail because they had the chance to succeed. And so Dorothy Thompson is the force of nature. She has seemingly no fear and no selfdoubt, and she plunges right ahead. Shes married to Sinclair Lewis, as peter said, when Sinclair Lewis threatens to divorce her. He says hes going to name hitler as a man who is edited with his marriage. Emily hahn also a chicago in phenomenally successful but francis guenther is stymied. She cannot do her own work. She is an ideas factory but she cant sit down and write. Shes always thwarting herself. Heart of the dynamic that is so productive for both the gun thursday in making this translation between inner life in geopolitics is precisely this one, which is to what extent, who is using home, in what way is her dependence to each other on each other like the ways in which the british are depending upon the indians in the british empire, with ways which may be the indians are depending upon the british. The thought is really to think kind of interpersonal dynamics that they themselves are experiencing and are super, super reflective about. Got it. Who has a question . If i ask you to go to the microphone, because were being videotaped. All. First, thank you for all the work you put in this book, number one. Number two, something that you referenced earlier on in this excellent conversation, and that is taking sides. By that i mean, based upon the homework youve done on this book, have you indeed concluded that theres no such thing as objective journalism . Underwood has a side that they take, maybe consciously or unconsciously. Thank you very much. Im very excited to the answer to this question. We all are. A i was going to say this is more of a question for you. I hope you Say Something as the actual journalist, as opposed to the want of the journalist. I think that there is fairness the want to be shirtless. At various moments objectivity is harder or easier, or more called for or less called for and so the moment of early 20s, the moment of this may be the 50s to the 70s you can see that it was, that objectivity in a Consensus Society functions much more seamlessly than it does. But, of course, the European Press has never been objective in that way. That was one of the lessons they took out of their exposure to people who are writing in the central European Press of the 20s especially. One notion is about maybe a Lesson Learned particularly abroad during the vietnam era was reported stenographers. If you remember the press briefings in psycho became known as the 5 00 follies. The reporters would say wait a minute thats that what we saw, you cant toasted this and were not going to print it. The word i like to use is balance is a dont think theres an objectivity. Think about anything you might be covering, anybody you might be spend time with, you have an opinion of that person if youre coming across you have have an opinion about whether the the witnesses like or not for the defendant is guilty. If youre covering sports you have an opinion whether the quarterback is a nice guy or not. And so its essentially a kind of a self awareness of what those biases are into account for them. What ultimately good reporting the psych a lot of other things. Its reliant onin your judgment and a certain decency. Yeah, and i think that was the hotter the political conflicts become, the worse information that is distributed is a harder it is to maintain. Im very much enjoying this. Would you please explain if any of these reporters were bilingual, and if, if not, how with those interviews conducted with principles such as mussolinian and hitler . And with a disadvantaged or were any advantaged . Its a really good question. Some of the more much more gifted linguists and others. So someone like sheean is totally fluent in five or six european languages. Dorothy thompson spoke had long but ungrammatical german. So she also brought and german. John gunther was less of a linguists say relied upon frances who was a very good linguist to do, you know, because theyre digesting a a huge amount of information in addition to the interviews they are reading the local press, trying to reach government reports. In those interviews come so in the hitler interviews both knickerbocker and thompson are just speaking to hitler in german. And that would have, i dont come i dont have a sense that they were in any way disadvantaged. I think about talking to hitler was you ask the questions, he just gives you his stadium speech. And theres a description of the eyes rolling up towards the ceiling as it he begins answering the question and allll of a sudden its as if you speaking to a crowd of tens of thousands. I, love that question, too, because so Many American areespondents to this day absolutely dependent on other translators, their fixers, the people in thehe introduce them o win their parachuting income the translations they get through those people. I was really struck by an interview you described when our cell, the hungarian journalist goes along with john gunther to the small towns in search of hitlers relatives. Without marcel he neither would have found those people nor would he have understood a word they said. Totally. He wouldve understood a a wod they said. Right. The subtleties, no. As i i said got there wasnt h of the linguist, and so the situation peter is described as that in the summer of 1933 intrigued by rumors about hitlers jewish ancestry, and man who is a hungarian journalist whos working for the Manchester Guardian and also the philadelphia evening ledger is offended Dorothy Thompson becomes also a mentor to all of the american journalists and didnt american who is in austria, including fulbright who is there as a student. So he finds hitlers relatives who were in this austrian backwaters, villages kind of concentrated around, and they go there. In fact, he takes guns there. He does know where hes going and is kind of annoyed there on the way from vienna to prague and then hes like i know where to go on this d2 r. They rely less on fixers though than contemporary parachuting in foreign correspondents, say of the 60s, \70{l1}s{l0}\70{l1}s{l0}, or 80s it did theyfo are sent for months or years to a place. And that is i think that is, that was partt of what distance made possible is they didnt move them. They sent them to vienna. If you in vienna yes, you did huge amount of traveling. You are traveling all over south Eastern Europe but you knew your territory. In reading that scene i was reminded of the scene in reds, movie about jack reed and he ends up on the side of the bolsheviks more or less in moscow and theres a party conference, spoke you must into the movie and he gets up and he claims in english and the translation is about the speech was about nine minutes long and the translation y was about ten seconds and he said tell them what i said. Tell them what i said. I have a colleague who is reporting as we speak in a faraway place where you just speak the language and he was saying exactly what was happening to him. Great question, long answer. He said yes. Its a a challenge for reporters to this day when you dont know the language. Is there another question that someone may have . I cant see because the pillow. To understand at the mic please. If i may, another question. And that is i was wondering if you could shed any light on the salaries of these individuals were making. With a underpaid, overpaid . That they have to take on multiple jobs in order to pay for the rent and food . That such a good question. When they are young people are basically stringers come so Dorothy Thompson was living in the flat, using our neighbors kitchen. She got the only bathtub in the unit. Or so she says. Question is a really but as they become luminaries, they are paid vast amounts of money. As reporters there always complain about howmo little mony theyey have good by comparison f course the european colleagues they are living like princes because they are americans, because the dollar is still going far and yet expense accounts which a very strategically use. Knickerbocker reporting from the fascist italian invasion or todays ethiopia has an expense, he racks up the equivalent of today about 80,000 in expenses in one month in the capital which i think would be quite difficult. This goes to part of the reason what especially the british and the french colleagues have such a dim view of them, because here these americans, they can always go home. Theyre not really in danger. Although people like knickerbocker in zip in a spanish prison in a dungeon. They have all this money. They of all of this access because if you are churchill you know that jeff to talk to Dorothy Thompson. If you want to reach american Public Opinion you talk to Dorothy Thompson, Vincent Sheean and Jonathan Guenther and h. R. Knickerbocker. Those of people are going to try to persuade americans that they cannot sit out this conflict in europe. Completelyy fasting. I wouldld love to ask one final question about but it just cant resist. You have done so deeply into the history of this period that ended in, if not exactly armageddon, conflagration. You had reporters trying to tell its orud come kind assorted othr trying to sort it out as well pick a number of people have worried, fretted that were now any moment in the United States were democracy itself is in peril. We are obviously seeing aggression around the world, danger signs. Do you see parallels in this history . And, of course, secondarily, what should journalist be doingu about all that . Yeah, its a really important question. Ith mean, so there are number of differences. So this parallels between the 1930s and now happen often times drawn. There are a number of theerences in terms of scale of economic depressions and the newness of democracy. But many other things look very familiar. So the sense of the rise of the leaders, the fragility of democracy, the weaponry, the attacks on a free press and, of course, the thingt that ive ben talking about here, which is the reason which geopolitics had become personal, that its a very difficult of a kind of private life that truly a private life may be in a way in which you might have thought about in the 1970s or 80s. I think reporters should continue to do all of the work of being the sort of for the fires of democracy, that theye doing and wish only that there were more support, more money and more claim. The notion is get out of the office, go find stuff out, tell people. Pretty basic. Some themes that remain the same from beginning to end. I will assume you know, dont sit in your office and pontificate but do what these characters did, which was to spend months, in some cases years nosing around and reporting b back. Amid all the joys and debaucheries. [laughing] which you seem to have led by the faceting lives and thank you so much for sharing those lives with us in such remarkable and really