According to me. And also to those of us, our audience at home on the live stream, we welcome you as always. My name is martin lay cano from the institute for the study of war and democracy here at the National World war ii museum. We are the humble group of scholars that bring you programs such as this and it is pleasure to have paul here with us tonight. The institute. What do we do . Apologize to the veterans that hear this every fee weeks but it is the search core and the Higher Education center of the museum and we call ourselves a community of scholars to build bridges to academics and other authors and experts around the world to make them part of the Museum Family and plug them into programs such as this to produce scholarship of our own as our multiple Award WinningSenior Historian rob sateeno, not here because hes celebrating his 60th birthday has done with all ten of his books. We offer a wonderful new Research Project and service which you could find on the website. We could now trace the individual history of a world war ii participant throughout the war and put that package together from archival documents and create a customized biography to help your family connect to world war ii. Were proud of that one. And another proud that were proud of is our Public Programs which is tonight. Meet the author. Were exceptionally lucky to have great friends and connections to bring the worlds foremost and most interesting presenters to come to the stage and talk to us. Let me start by our usual tradition. Do we have any world war ii veterans or homefront workers with us tonight . Please rise. [ applause ] and veterans of any other eras. [ applause ] thank you all and i hope you indulge me as i thank my favorite veteran sarah who i hope is watching from home. Many of you have been here for a large number of the wonderful meet the author events. This is a great milestone for us in the history of this program. This is important speaker series. For the first time we have a sponsor and we are very grateful to welcome the Strait Foundation from houston. We want to certainly thank the Strait Foundation and george w. Strait jr. For the support of the 2018, 2019 meet the author series and we hope theyll continue that relationship for many years to come. [ applause ] tonights speaker for me is an example of the two things that i always urge everybody that comes to me with a speak tore find. I say you bring me somebody who could deliver quality scholarship. Best work, best research, hard work and delivers a beautiful narrative and well written an the book has just got to be good. And then im personally guilty of, they cant be born. Deliver a great presentation and tonights presenter paul kix, the Deputy Editor of espn the magazine with the integration of content through the espn many platforms, i challenge anyone to call espn boring. You might have seen his writers in the new yorker, gq, mens journal and the wall street journal just to name a few. I hope you have heard of all of those. Paul was from iowa. Was in boston for a time and now resided in connecticut with his wife sonia who is an exceptionally nice person who has been helping out with the event tonight. You cant beat that. And theyre three wonderful children. Tonight paul is going to present for us on a really great book about one of the fascinating characters and i wont steal his thunder, it sounds like, gosh, this has got to be a movie. And maybe it will be. And if it is, were going to viet y invite you to the museum. And arafto crat that became the most daring antinazi commando, please welcome paul kix to our stage. [ applause ] thank you, everybody for coming tonight. This is fantastic. It is great to see this many people here and interested about world war ii in general, about france in particular. It was great to i was asked months ago to come down here on this citys 300th anniversary, it seemed fitting for me and thankfully it was fitting as well for the museum. I want to start with actually a question that i get. Ill be taking questions after a while. But one of the first questions that i get is wait a minute, how exactly does a guy who edits and writes about sports, how does he do a book on that guy, and what is that guys name . So, well take the second part first which is that guys name is robert de La Rochefoucauld. And how i got into it, one day in 2012 i was reading the new york times, just flipping through on my phone and i saw an obituary and it said world war ii commando and spy who dressed as nun who saba tahjed his way across Southern France and worked for a secret group of british commandos dies at 88. And i said, well im going to keep reading that obituary. And the story of robert, even in obituary form was remarkable. It was so good that National Public radio did a story based on the obituary that appeared in the times. It was so good that there is a website called and youll have to excuse the language, but a website called badassofthe week. That said this guy is the greatest bad ass that weve ever had. So, the thing that interested me just that this is a guy whose family history, im assuming there are people here who have been to france, right. Just by a show of fans, how many people here are familiar with the rochefoucauld name. The rochefoucauld family is the fourth oldest family in france. Its lineage literally shaped france. My favorite story of the La Rochefoucauld, is imagine yourself in 1789 in the garden of versailles and king louie sees the pitch forks coming. And he turns to an aide and he says, is this a revolt . And the aide says, no, sire. This is the revolution. And that aide was roberts great, great, great, great grandfather. The family has a street named after them in paris. The La Rochefoucauld family has been has been proved for the La Rochefoucauld family. They have been lie onnized within the military and recognized by the kaCatholic Church for the roles during the reign of terror and La Rochefoucaulds them. And it is a rich and old family. Some of this is in the obituary that im reading in the new york times. I didnt do anything with it, though. And that is because i was an editor at espn the magazine. My wife and i had three kids, including twin boys who were less than six months old at the time. And perhaps most importantly, i didnt speak french. So i thought there is no way i could actually do this book. But the summer of 2012 becomes the fall of 2012 and i had you have to understand something, i just love really good stories for the sake of stories and id been wanting for some time to tell and write my first book. Ive been writing books since i was about 7 years old. And so by the fall of 2012, i cant get this story out of my head. So i went to my wife one night and i said ive got to do it. Well the very first step of me trying to do it was to find roberts memoir. He had written a memoir about his war. It had never been translated into english. And the very first thing my wife and i did was we found it on amazon and it cost about 200 euros. It was rare at the time. It is now not as rare. And we set about trying to figure out how to piece this together. But neither of us spoke french. So we used Google Translate. Now how many people here how many people here have used Google Translate . Wee. How many people here have used it for more than a sentence or a phrase . Because what do you start to see when you do is that. You have no sense of what is going on here. And that is what happened. Page after page i get back and it was very hard for me to figure out what was going on. So we retranslated it. We had thrown it back into the Google Translate machine until we had something that i thought was about 85 of i could understand basically 85 of roberts story. And i said, okay. This story is unbelievable. And then the cynical journalist in my kicks in and i thought, wait a minute, this story is literally unbelievable. So before i wrote a proposal, before the book was optioned by dream works and we could talk about that afterwards if you like, i had to figure out, is this a story that is even worth doing. So i had some friends in boston that had friends in paris and i said robert said at the end of the book he received all of these commendations from the french government. If he actually received them, if there is a paper trail that i could follow, at least hes been vetted by the french government. So at least i could start. Now, who here has been to france . Oh, we asked that question. Who here has dealt with french bureaucracy and knows what it is like. And again, this became a very laborious process, almost as laborious as translating the book itself. But ultimately after a few months, i got a call and sophie was her name, the journalist helping me in france and she said, paul, it is wonderful, he is who he said he is. And im like, he is. And then she sends me the email and he received all of the commendations that he said he received in the memoir. So then the real work began. So let me tell you about im going to sort of talk a little bit about roberts life and then ill read you a short snippet of the book itself. Robert comes from very prestigious family, a very rich family. And one of the first things that i had to try to figure out is why does he choose to fight . Because he could have done something that the vast majority of the french did. Which was absolutely nothing. Scholars have later contended that perhaps as few as 80 , perhaps as much as 90 of the french populous neither aided the allies nor aided the fascists. About 10 of the french populous were openly collaborating with the nazis. A much smaller percentage of that, as few as 2 of the french populous, according to scholarly estimates, were active in the resistance. Robert was one of them. But what really fascinated me was he didnt have to be. Again, the money alone, the connections alone could have meant that he could have gone to neutral spain, meant he could have found a nice farm in the english countryside and that he could have had the wherewithal to get to the states without too much problem. But he didnt do that. He did the hardist thing possible. Which is to actively participate in the resistance and to do so would mean if they were captured by the germans, they were kill. They were not treated like prisoners of war. Its far worse than immediate death. It was torture. It was excruciating torture. So why. This is one of the animating questions. And part of it was because of the storied family history. Roberts father olivier was a decorated world war i officer commissioned at the outbreak of world war ii and captured after the battle for france was lost and captured five days after that battle. And a point where he was still fighting. So say his military records. So that gives you a sense of the La Rochefoucauld family. The La Rochefoucauld home in 1940 was commandeered by the germans. And robert de La Rochefoucauld is an angry young 17yearold man finding a way for himself in the new and scary world and confronted with officers literally in his home. And his mother consuelo, to give you a hint of the sort of character she was, there was a highranking german army officer who was part of the nobility in german. And he came to stay at the La Rochefoucauld house while it was being while the germans were living among the rochefoucaulds. And the story goes that he walked up the front steps and you have to understand consuelo is a woman who made her own cigarettes from corn hucks. Shes a short and stalky woman and doesnt take any gruff from anyone and shes standing there and scowling at the man and hes being his most chivalrous and he takes off his gloves and said madam de La Rochefoucauld it is a great pleasure to stay in this wonderful home. Your name travels far beyond the french border. And as he extends his hand, she slaps him across the face. And there was another officer with her with them that said, madam, an introduction like that could risk deportation. And she didnt care. And neither did her 17yearold son. Who wanted to find a way to fight. Of course by 1940, after the battle for france was lost, everything had been turned over to the germans. All the way down to hunting knives. So roberts interest in joining the resistance, he couldnt actually do it. But on the bbc, there was one general who had fled france before the fall and from the pulpit of the bbc, he said every night i want the battle for france to carry on. And robert listened in silence to those broadcasts. And that general was the most junior general in france and his flame was charles begall. Robert was so taken with what begall had to say that he found a way to get to london. He had to do it by first sneaking his way south through spain because you couldnt cross the channel. There was no way that could have happened. He gets there and he is interrupted as the british like to say. There was a new force whose colloquial name was the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare and the ministry is about as understated as what this organization actually did. It was known as special operations executive. And ian fleming, the author of james bond, would ultimately base his character on the men and women of s. O. E. S. O. E. Was not exactly beloved by the other British Secret agencies. In part because of what it did. And what it did was anarchy by any means. S. O. E. s job was unlike anything the world has seen before. It would train foreign nationals in all legal and illegal means of warfare, parachute them back into the native lands and then watch as they fomented revolution. So robert decided that even if well he wanted to still fight for begall but decided perhaps the best way to do it was to line himself with the british. And so what he learned from the british was how to break how to kick a man in the testicles, how to properly break his back. How to properly slice a knife across his throat and roll out of a train moving at 40 miles an hour and how to do something called silent killing. This so enraged, this tactic of silent killing so enraged hitler that he issued what was known as a commando order in 1942 and that order was directed at the british and it said if anyone is found to have been trained by them, these bandits of the british are to be killed immediately. Robert flew back into france, though. In the summer of 1943, having been trained in all sorts of warfare. And he flew back confident knowing that he had a skillset that so few people actually had. His First Mission was a very interesting one. He was to sabotage facilities in central france that were central to the nazi war machine. He carried it out with absolute aplomb. But the last mission of s. O. E. , right before they got on the plane to go back, was one of humility. And robert had to keep that in mind as the summer of 1943 turned into the fall of 1943. You see, because the s. O. E. Brass gave every s. O. E. Agent a cyanide pill and there was many brave agents that come before you and you need to remember that the odds will start to work against you after about six months in country. And if ever you are captured, swallow this quick. Because we dont want you to giving up any information. So the fall of 1943 turns into the late fall of 1943 and now robert sees what they mean. Because the nazis and in particular the gestapo were very effective in infiltrating resisting cells. He was working for one known as noahs arc run by a woman and the largest resistance cell in all of france at the time. But mar fer caud called 1943 the terrible year because she literally forgot how many agents were arrested. Was it 300 . Was it 400 . Was it 500 . And robert in country there in central france, hes having hes seeing the people that hes working with, one day and then he doesnt hear from them again so he has to imagine, well, he knows that he will probably never see them again. So paranoia sets in. Am i next. Guilt sets in. Why have i not been captured. He still is only 19 years old. But he has to start to think about this cyanide pill. He ends up moving to a barn in this small village, it is where he could hide some of the guns that had been parachuted down with him because hes still thinking maybe there is a way i could carry out my work even though his resistance cell had been decimated and one night asleep in the barn he was jostled awake. And he saw a half circle of men around him and in felt hats and leather jackets and thin smiles on their faces. And they said, how are you this evening . And then they started to beat him. And they didnt stop until he was tied up he said, like a sausage. And then one of the gestapo agents went immediately to a corner of the barn where he had hidden the guns. And he said, what is this . And robert said thats not mine. And he smiled again and he said, yes, it is. So roberts initial fear of who gave me up, how do they know this, it was replaced by a much, much darker fear. Where am i being taken and what is going to happen to me when i get there. For those of you who havent read the book yet, robert is taken to a prison in osair. And waver you could imagine, the nazis doing to try to extract information from a resistance insider like robert, it happened. The average time, i had the chance to look at the records from the prison rolls, most inmates were there for one week or two weeks and then they were released. And the historians ive spoken with in france, the local historians believe because the nazis gave them the information they wanted and then they left. Robert was there for four months. And toward the end of that time, he went before Kangaroo Court and within 10 minutes his execution was ordered. And he spent his last night in his cell and he sort of bemoaned the fact that he had spent enough time in germany, but the german priest giving him his last rights, he didnt understand a word the guy was saying. That was where id like us to continue our story. So im going to read a little excerpt now from the book. There we are. All right. Just before 8 00 a. M. , two guards escorted la as the guards hopped in the back, he didnt see the point in introductions. The truck belched into low gear, and the red doors parted to let hem out. It started near the major thoroughfare whose northbound lane directed one to paris. The truck, however, turned right, south, toward the rural countryside. They were headed for a series of dirt paths off route nationale. The terrain moving from unsbrumted wheel fields to groves of trees to a for, in the road. Where it drove one ever deeper in the woods, to a clear where the road ended. There again three trees pockmarked with bullet holes holes, would be told to stand, while the nazi guards took their aim. 43 people would be executed here during the war. As the truck started out on this path, pathing the browntaupe chapel ocean chapel on the grounds, he had a thought. Why give in now . He had spent the last four months ignoring the screams of his body. Now they wanted him dead, but he didnt wish to die. He noticed the nazis one mistake. They had never learned much about him there were no handcuffs on his wrists. He saw the guns resting on their lapse. If he couldnt succeed, he stopped, he wanted to have died as he lived, fighting. He looked at the other inmates who sensed him calculating something. Even if it means being shot, he said to the other frenchmen, i would rather by shot right away. The prisoner traffic was light, the truck moved. The guards didnt speak french, or at least didnt hear la rochefoucald over the wind. The other inmates said youre crazy, it wont work. In a moment he sprang himself on the near guard, plowing on him and jumps from the truck, somersaulting as he had been trained in enlind. He broke into a sprint. An even louder reports of rifle. The first bullets missed, he looked behind his shoulder to see the trucks driver slam on the brakes. The sudden stop through the guard headfirst over the trucks hood. He went on to a second treat, on to a third. He did not know the town. He had spent the last four months so he ran mindlessly, and he ran under he weakened legs burned, he ran on to avenue victor hugo and came upon a guarded villa of sorts, the log g gestapo headquarters. Had someone inside the building already seen him . And where was the truck . He decided to continue down the road despite hi hearts drumming, he walked as casually as a man trying to escape he saw a sedan nearby, keys were in the ignition. He saw a driver maybe 30 feet away pacing back and forth, waiting for someone to emerge from the building. Just then he heard distant shouting, the truck, now he had to decide now. He moved closer to the car and swung the door wide and threw himself in. He started the engine and peeled out before the chauffeur realized what was happened. He saw the man draw a pistol, fire twice, but it was too late. Robert had escaped the nazi pennants whipping in the wind. Down one street, then another, liking for something to direct him out of here, and then there, a sign, paris this way. The root was none other than route nationale. He saw the prison itself and sped right past it. The open highway with the pedal to the floor and seconds becoming minutes, still no one trailing him. He might actually make it. Had he had never felt so alive. More time passed. Robert even began to relax behind the wheel, but soon he noticed extraesque ahead of him slow, and saw in the distance a roadblock, a wooden beam stretching across the highway. The germans must have put all neighboring jurisdictions on high alert, and planned to stop each vehicle until they had their man. Saw every soldier asking every driver for identification. He was in the garb he had worn the last four months. He tank, he had a full beard, cuts and bruises across his face and body. There was little hope of him proving to the soldiers, maybe especially in the nazi sedan, if word of the vehicle being comma commandeered, the soldiers faces visible, seemingly inquisiti inquisitive, thats when he gunned the engine. One of the soldiers who flipped over the hood, the second opened fire, and he ducked. He kept his head throw, the rat atattat. Just as important, he was beyond the reach of the germans guns. He checked himself. Somehow he was unharmed. For the third time that morning he had avoided german fire at something close to pointblank range. He saw a gravel road ahead, took the turn as fast as he could. Plumes of dirt kicking up behind him. He had to put distance between himself and the nazis. The road soon rose and fell beneath hem. He hummed over it. He noticed smoke billowing from the engine under he had no choice to he saw a quarry up ahead. He stopped before it, got out, listened, nothing yet the best thing was to crash the car in such a way as the germans might overlook it. He got behind it and pushed it into the a quarry, it feld into one of the deepest voids and crashing into plumes of dust and smoke. When cleared he saw the outline of a crumpled, charred mess. Theyll never get this one, he thought. He ran into a nearby line of woods. His new plan to await a nightfall that could not come fast enough. He spent the next hours in anxious solitude. When stars at last filled the sky, he made his way again, a strong moon guiding him, but once more aimless. He did not know where he was. He walked under branching into thickets, among groves of trees. He walked for what seemed like hours, with the idea he might find a sympathetic family in the countryside, something that would serve as a temporary base where he could get a few hours sleep and perhaps a meal before sneaking his way, by who knows what means, out of here. At last in a distance he saw lights. They multiplied and became the nighttime view of a city. Maybe he knew someone here, he thought. He saw a sigh sign at the towns edge. He was back where he started. I am happy to answer any questions. Well go right here. [ inaudible ] the question is, what percentage of agents actually took the cyanide pill . I dont have a firm number on that. I have annex decdotal evidence there were quite a few. A lot of time, you know, they did it because they couldnt trust they felt that they they couldnt trust their mind. Their body had been weakened to the point where if i am questioned one more time that might be the time that i break. So it was better for me to protect my comrades than break it. I just want to add a brief followup. I had a chance to speak last night with when High School Students who will be going to normandy. What i told them was, for a a lot of resistance fighters, it wasnt just the interrogation and the torture itself, but if it the germans could figure out who your family was, they a lot of times would bring them to the interrogations and say, we will shoot him or slit her throat if you dont tell us. And its those sorts of absolutely awful situation that some chose to ecoo scape. Back here. What did he do after the war . After the war he ended up serving as a commando of sorts for 20 years. Hes in the franceindochina war, and then in smaller battles. After that, he was a mayor of a small town in france for about 30 years. His whole life was dedicated to public service. What time of commando raids did he conduct . What time of commando raids did he conduct . I am going to give an unsatisfying answer, because the type of commando raids are found in the book, so i would say if you want to read the full scope of what he did during the war, its on sale back there. Two questions, your book and what you were describing, was alps of that in his memory . Is that something you just imagined . No. Im going to squirrel this away. You have a second questions . This is the first time i heard that the french were so uninvolved in the war. Im just amazed. Ill go in order here any no, i spent my career as a journalist for a reason. I love stories that just happen to be true. The primary sources were he memory, but i got lucky. There was an audio reporting of his life that he made with his family, and that was a twodisc audio recording. Some of those episodes were not included in his memory. In addition to that, there was a dvd that his nephew, a budding documentary filmmaker made, of just the entire family. Those im using as primary sources, but im also and against the mel tear histories. In the end, i say this in the notes of the book, i dont blame you for not reading it, because they can become kind of tedious, i say in the notes i spent four years researching this book in five countries. I wanted to get everything right the second part of your question is just about theres a myth that de gaulle perp traits that every the lennish equivalent is the sorrow and the pity. A first look at what mom and dad, grandma and grandpa actually did. It woke up the french populace open to the notion they didnt all resist. Squernl peoples, subsequent popular books, moves end up fur dispelling that myth the. I have a follow uptoth uptothefollowup. You told me it would be released in french next year around dday . Are you. Thats a great question. The french now have a term for world war ii that translates to the black years or the dark years. Its a very complicated history in france. At this point to answer your question, the real history is engaged, right . It is not seen as the quote unquote good war as its seen here in the united states. Its very complicated. You talked at the beginning about dreamworks. This is strange. Before i had written a word. I have an agent in new york who subcontracts with an agent in l. A. For film rights. I remember distinctly the day i was sitting down, and mining agent called and said i need to sit down, and he goes, i want you to know that Harvey Weinstein is looking to option your book. Harvey weinstein was a monster. We just didnt know it then. I said, wow, thats amazing. Weve got to do that. And then hes like, no, no, no, i think we can get more interest. I was like, no, lets go with in a, this is great. A month passes, i get another call from mire agent, paul, i need you to sit down, and he goes Steven Spielberg wants to buy the movie. I said, oh. So i was actually at espn when i got that call, and i didnt do a whole lot for the rest of the day. To answer your question directly, sir, dreamworks optioned the film. Theres a guy nair carey fukinawa did anyone see true detective with Woody Harrelson . Carey was the guy who corrected that full season. 9 producer is michael sugar, whose last major credit was spotlight which won best picture a couple years ago. Its a story of the Catholic Church scandal in boston and the the boston globe reporters who unearthed it. Theres good people attacked to it ives waiting for it to actually be made. Where might that film be premiered . Hint hint. Another question in the back. Following your subjects training, does he maintain contract, or was he under the control of the s. O. E. At all . This is fascinating. S. O. E. s sort of spiritual grandfather is t. E. Lawrence, right . The lawrence of arabia. What he did s. O. E. Basically scales it for world war ii. What i mean by that, is they say go into the foreign lands, youll have a handler, of course, but your missions are largely they conditian be influenced by french intelligence robert believed he was working as much for the french as he was for the british. That was by design. To go back to lawrence in 1917, he wanted the freedom to sort of figure out what would be the best operation . Ra which rail car would be the best to sabotage. They had handlers, but they needed freedom to do what they thought was best for the allies. What did you say that s. O. E. Stood for . Special operations executive. A name that doesnt mean a lot, and i think that was by design. The dates he escaped . As a matter of fact we do have those. This is another one of those little eureka moments. When i was in france going through the prison rolls, it lists imprisonment, as i said a minute ago. Next to roberts entry is a very strange pence the mark from the germans. It says, he escaped. It says on march 20th, 1944. So when i saw that, i was like again, the cynical journalist in me is like, wow, that is amazing. The local historics with whom i was working, they had heard of him, but it wasnt until we went to the prison rolls where we saw that level of independent confirmation. It was pretty interesting. Film question online from dave, back to your aspirations for this to be a major motion picture. Who would you cast to play the lead . Well, the producer and director there was a guy who starred in a movie called call me by your name did anybody happen to do it . The lead in that is a young frenchman, and timothy was up for an oscar for best actor. His father is french, his mother is english. They have sent him the book, and as all things move in hollywood, it was sent months ago, and he is, quote, considering it. I hope if everybody sees that movie, he is very slight. He would have to bulk up a bit and probably make a goatee or somebody. Something. He just needs something to stuffen him up a bit. So this might be off target somewhat, but in regard to the thought that perhaps 90 of the french were not fighting, would this be in any way related to their experiences in world war i . Oh, yes. When i read that maybe 75 of men between 15 and 75 killed or something . Yeah, that is a great question. The answer is overwhelmingly yes. There are many battles that took place. In fact the estate was its own battle site. It was taken and retaken by the french and germans 11 times over the course of one week. I mean, robert grew up with the massive artillery theres so many things i could say. Perhaps the best way to sum it up is this, robert grew up the acreage was a working farm. Until the mid 1930s, the soil was too hot to till from all of the bombs and the ar tillries and everything else. Even into the 1940s, the hands felt they couldnt work it because of the grenades they might come across. There was an editorial that circulated in one of the french dailies at the time, from a world war i veteran, who said rather servitude than war. Rather servitude than war. Thats how deeply the french were scarred by what happened in world war i. By any chance during your research, did you come over any French Resistance that was working for the nazis . Yes. In fact, part of the way that robert was captured, and that cell i talked about, noahs ark, part of the way it was infiltrated was through a French Resistance fighter named john paul leone, and j. P. Leone, he worked for combat, which is for any sort of literary buffs here, combat was the organization in which albert kamu was aligned during the war. So leone is rising higher and higher in the ranks of combat when the germans get to him. I dont know exactly what happened. The historical record is a bit unclear whether he was interrogated. There were actually a surprising apt of flinch resistance fighters who actually had fascist leanings, so perhaps he was able to be persuaded to join the germans. In any case he does, that flipping him ended up just tearing apart all of noahs ark. You see. Did you ever learn what happened to the second prisoner . I have, the prison rules. It would have been one of two other men, and i have his name in an earlier draft i included it, and then excluded it, because i didnt have it absolutely for certain he was the one on the site of the execution that day with robert. I say that, because there wasnt an execution that ended up happening on march 20th, as you might imagine. The germans arent like, well, we missed this guy, but still have this one, so lets go take care of him. I was able to isolate it to those two. I ended up not includes it, because i couldnt say for certain which one he would have been. I read your book. I enjoyed it. Oh, thank you. Its quite complicated. You end up, a lot of it perhaps not just history, but the whole story. When you end it with him going to the trial. I mean that in a nutshift im going to try to make this brief, and not give away to which. Maurice works for the vichy regime, outside of bordeaux. Actually in the 1980s, hes found to have put his signature on cattle cars to basically deport jews out of bordeaux. Its his signature that has them leaving. So a criminal trial take 20 years oar so to reach the dockets. The his tornado who first unearthed the signature by 1998 said he did not believe that maurice deserving tore charged with these crimes. Wives that . In vichy, he was a small bureaucrat. His job was literally to put his suggest on orders of men who ranked above him. Both of those men, by 1998, when the trial actually took place were dead. But the french, because the populace was well aware of the sordid, twisted and frankly truly complicated history of what happened during the war, and they were looking for basically a scapegoat. Who can we nail for this . That became pupp. Ion. I wont say exactly how robert gets involved, but he ends up becoming involved in the trial. Did you get to speak to any of his family . Yes, i did. I was very fortunate. All of roberts children, his three daughters, his son, all agreed to speak with me. That was actually a mixed blessing. It was wonderful, of course, because i came to know the man. It was not so great, because robert was from a certain culture and was born and raised in a certain time when you didnt talk about the truly most painful moments of your life. So, in fact, robert received late in life the legion of honor, the highest honor in france, and his children were, like, dad, what did you do . They had only heard snippets. Its actually in response to the audio cd that i mentioned, robert worked with a journalist in paris to put it together so his family would finally have the full account. The family was great, because i came to understand the culture of the family, the dynamics of the family, but they didnt have a whole lot of insight into what it was like for robert, except for a few small episodes. Im grateful for those episodes, but they were small. Paul, i have the last question. If youre liberty or feel comfortable, what is your next project . I actually am choosing between three. So ill do a quick span here. One is a cia contractor, and the story is about what happens to him after he return are from his tour in afghanistan. The second is about a pool ticke politician who served in world war ii in the most decorated regiment in u. S. History. And then a politics who nixon absolutely despised during watergate. The third is a preacher in birmingham, alabama, whos about a half generation older than Martin Luther king, greatly influenced what king did. This preacher was absolutely brave beyond measure. You talk about how robert was, this guy was equal. So im going to give myself the second half of the year. Who wants the contractor . Who wants the war hero turned politician . And who wants the preach center . See . Its about split. The thing about this book it was easily the hardest thing i ever had to do. I literally had to learn another language, right . It was also easily the most professionally satisfying thing ive ever done. The benefit of the next one is there wont be international travel, all three characters are americans. So thank you, everybody. The best news of the night is paul has left a book up here. So ive got mine. Thank you so much, paul, for shake roberts compelling and fascinating story with us. I would like to take a chance to thank him. He did double duty last night. He talk or normandy scholars last night. Paul obviously will be in the back signing copies of his book. If you enjoyed this, i very much hope youll join us again on wednesday june 27th for omar bartoff, one of the most recognized scholars of holocaust, who will be here talking about his book anatomy of a genocide. Thank you for coming. Come back soon. First ladies, influence and image on American History tv, examines the private lives and public roles of the nations first ladies. Tonight we look at Edith Roosevelt and helen taft. Edith bam the first first lady to travel abroad. Watch first ladies, influence and image tonight on cspan3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country. Why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is . And the deepest cause, where well find of true meaning of evolutions was the transformation that took place. Were going to talk about both of these sides of this story here, right . The tools, the techniques of slave owner power, and also about the tools and technique of power that were practices by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their opportunities on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th lectures in history every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Next she sits down for an interview about her time as a cia special praise officer indeed immediate aftermath of september 11th. She also discusses her decision to leave the cia to become an fbi special agent. The International Spy museum recorded this he a vent in february. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming out on this gloomy evening to the International Spy museum. Ite chris costa. Im really excited to introduce this program with former cia operations officer, fbi special agent, now author tracy wall de. She joined the cia right off college. She went