Like, i definitely dont mean to offend anybody, and if you want to talk more deeply, but if youre going to be so thinskinned we cant have a conversation, thats your voice, but im going to keep talking. So thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. So, eric, youve touched on the theme of education and the role in promotion of virtue. So my wife and i, believing that the purpose of education is wisdom and virtue, chose a classical christian school. Right. Some would argue youre abandoning the Public Schools where the reality is the majority of our citizens will be educated well, i mean yeah. Just touch on some specifics around how we can, regardless of where our children go to school, engage in the Public School system. Well, it depends. Everybodys called to do different things. Im not going to send my daughter to a school so i can, you know, make a political statement while her brain is ruined, you know what im saying . I think, first, we have to take care of our own, and if it means sending your kid to this school or that school, you have to do that first. But you are right, to the extent that we can be voices in the Public Square and in the Public Schools, we should be. I agree. I mean, the Public School situation has gotten out of hand, and its part of why were here. Its part of i mean in this conversation and why i wrote this book because, you know, the teachers unions and so on and so forth, theyre not beholden to the free market right . Theyre in there, and theyre saying tough luck. And you hear over and over and over again of teachers teaching things that they have no business getting into, right . Schools are supposed to be in local [inaudible] in other words, the most basic idea of freedom is that i can raise my kids the way i want to raise my kids. And so i dont have time to teach my kids, so were going to create a school, and were going to pay taxes so that somebody else can do what i want them to do. Theyre going to be paid, and theyre going to teach our kids. Now, the idea that those teachers then say, well, were going to do what we want to do is fundamentally unamerican and undemocratic. It just doesnt make sense. So the idea that we have schools teaching our kids, Public Schools teaching our kids things that are not what we would want them to be taught is just fundamentally crazy. And so thats why you have to have school choice. Thats one thing im very happy to say that trump has been talking about, school choice. [applause] because the idea that i have to send my kid to get indoctrinated by some crazy people who arent afraid of losing their jobs, that is just fundamentally unamerican. It is wrong. My mother left communist germany when she was 17 years old by herself because of this issue. She was having communist garbage poured down her throat every day in school, and she said i couldnt take it. I had to get out of there. Because it was indoctrination. And so, you know, she chose not just to go to another school, but to leave east germany. And i think we have to understand that we have freedom. I mean, if somebody says to me, for example, if i had my kids in a Public School and they said, oh, yeah, tomorrow we are going to, whatever, were going to teach third graders about how they can choose their own sexuality, some parent in that school needs to contact all the other parents in that school and say heres what were going to do. Were going to keep our kids home until the maniacs stop teaching things that we dont want them to teach our kids. You have to be willing to keep your kid home. You have to be i mean, the montgomery bus boycott, rosa parks, for a year africanamericans didnt ride the buses because they said that is wrong, and were not going to put up with it. And i really think if some people think that they can bring the way they think to bear on our kids in that kind of way, we see, heres the thing. Meshes are americans are nice. I said this before. Were so nice, we dont get angry. You have to say, no, youre not going to do that. My kids not going to go to school. What are you going to do, put me in jail . Its not norway yet, right . This is america. And i really think that people have to, they have to get involved. Its what i, you know, i mean, its what it means to be we the people, right in that we have to get involved in these things, and we have to be willing to make a fuss. Because the schools, they simply dont have this right. But if they do it and we allow them to do it, we have ourselves to blame. So i really think that, you know, were kind of at a point where the craziness is getting peoples attention. But we need leaders. We need, you know, crazy immigrants like me or, you know, whatever, people who have been raised in a way where they think its okay to get upset rather than, oh, i dont want to upset anybody. We have if somebodys doing that to your kids, you know, at some point you have to act. Anyway, probably just one more question. I appreciate the way that you contrasted kind of this row to bust belief in original sin with the virtue that was present at the time and also in the founders. So did i do that . [laughter] you did. I dont think[inaudible convers] ill take the compliment, thank you. So benjamin franklin, for instance, in Walter Isaacsons biography is really this kind of genius he donist, and, you know hedonist, and not all of the founders were absolute saints. So what do you really see, whats been the turn in virtue in america that has been kind of walked away from . I dont think its very easy to pinpoint it. I think that, roughly speaking, it started in the 60s, basically. But its a trickle down from the 20s and the 30s. I mean, elite schools like yale already turned this corner in the 30s. Basically. And europe turned this corner as a result of world war i. They had seen the twin authorities of church and state basically let them down, and, you know, they had lost lives, and they really turned against those authorities in a way. And i think that the same kind of thing happened, it was a loss of confidence in authority to begin with and a kind of is a cynicism or anihilism or something. But i really dont think it reached us until the 60s and the 70s where it really became codified, it became part of, you know, the way we function. And so its not something you can put your finger on, but i think you do see that the media typically tend to be uncomfortably secular. Even though theyre talking to a nation where most people have some kind of faith, you typically dont get that. In other words, you dont have that kind of a free market operating in the media. The media typically is people that, you know, secular l. A. People, secular new york people. They dont get that. And so they speak a different kind of language. And i think that, you know, the market always corrects itself, but it doesnt necessarily do it right away, you know . The truth will out eventually. But, you know, we had 70 years of soviet communism before that wall fell down. Is so these things can last a very long time, and i would say for a long time, for about 50 or so years, weve had this, you know, hollywood basically created antiheros in the 60s. So all the filming ms you had films you had before that, they suddenly stopped making those. They were seen an corny. And its part of the culture, the drinking water. The ivy league where i went to school, its part of the way people begin to see things, and then thats the club you belong to. Thats how people think. And i really think that the gatekeepers, the people in media, you know, people in teachers unions, people in politics, generally speaking a lot of them are those kinds of idealogues. Your average american is not really there, but over time its affected america, you know . So i do think were at a tipping point. I really think were very close to the edge. So for me, theres hope. But i say this with a level of desperation as well. I think we must take this seriously. This is not something that it cannot go on. So there you have it. Well, folks, thank you so much for coming. [applause] i appreciate it very much. So many of you have come from out of town. What were going to do thank you. [applause] i appreciate that. Let me just say that a what were going to do is let the party continue, and you can hang around as long as you want. Ill be signing books as long as there are people who want books signed. And im happy to do that just to hang out. Please do tell your friends about socrates in the city. Please do read the book. Please do if you dont want to read the book, i dont care, but at least buy several copies, if you dont mind. [laughter] well leave it at that. God bless you and god bless america. [applause] [inaudible conversations] heres a look at some books that are being published this week look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv. [inaudible conversations] hello, everyone. Good evening. Im susan caul, and on behalf of our owners and our entire staff, id like to welcome you to politics prose. Before we get started, this would be a good time to turn off or silence your cell phones. Also, after the event if you dont mind helping us by folding up your chairs, wed be grateful. And during our question and answer session, we have a microphone right here, so if you could line up with your questions, that would be helpful because we are recording this event, and cspan is here as well. You can also watch this on our Youtube Channel in just a few days. Also on your way out, please pick up one of our april calendars and take a look at all of the great events we have forthcoming both here and at our three busboys and poets locations. Weve also got some great trips and classes. Im honored to welcome Adam Hochschild back to politics prose this evening to discuss his powerful new book, spain in our hearts, which is an account of american involvement in the spanish civil war and a consideration of the perceived romance that attracted 2800 americans to spain, a quarter of whom died, which was the largest number of americans before or since to join someone elses civil war. This strangely literary war that famously attracted the likes of earnest hemingway and George Orwell, of course, turned out to be extremely morally complex, and hochschild demonstrates the nuanced ways in which the political alignments that formed at the time turned out to be the prequel to world war ii. The book is just out and getting great reare views including reviews including in the New York Times which called his account excellent and involving. Hes also the cofounder of mother jones magazine and the author of seven books including King Leopolds ghost which was a finalist for the National Book critics circle award as was his recent to end all wars. Hes also been a finalist for the National Book award, and he won the Los Angeles Times book prize and a penn usa literary award. Were so honored to have him here to launch this new book. Please help me welcome Adam Hochschild. [applause] thank you, susan. Its great to be here in this wonderful store, and i know if i lived in washington, d. C. , i would spend so much time here, they would go have me arrested for loitering. [laughter] its also nice to see so many friends here from the worlds of journalism and book writing, so many of you, in fact, that it makes me fear were just writing for each other. [laughter] i hope thats not the case. Anyway, its a pleasure to have a chance to tell you something about my new book. To begin, lets sort of mentally run the clock back to the 1930s. The setting in which these events took place. It was a grim time here in the United States. The Great Depression was taking a terrible toll. Roughly a third roughly a quarter of the american working population was out of work. 34 million americans were living in households with no cash income. Abroad, similar conditions. And in the aftermath of world war i, some even nastier things as well. Hitler was on the rise, finally came to power in germany in 1933. Mussolini already had been in power since the 1920s in italy. Much of Eastern Europe was under farright regimes with an antisemitic tinge. Fascism was definitely on the rise. Oddly enough, in the 1930s, the early 1930s, one of the very few bright spots was spain. In 1931 centuries of monarchy recently interwoven with a period of military dictatorship came to an end. The king left the country. National democratic elections were held, real ones for the very first time. And at last it seemed democracy was coming to a country that sorely needed it. There was much work to be done. Education up to this point had been in the hands of the Catholic Church and the catholic hierarchy in spain was by far the most reactionary in europe. Separate education for boys and girls, education for girls was heavy on sewing and religion, not much else. There were huge disparities of wealth. Most of the land was in the hands of very large landowners owning enormous estates. Millions of peasants had little or no land at all and worked as laborers on these estates, and more than a quarter of the population was illiterate. Highest percentage in western europe. In early 1936 small d democrats and progressives all over the world felt a further surge of optimism because in the spanish elections in february of that year a coalition of left and liberal parties won. And so there were promises of further reform, speeding up the process of land reform, for example. Speeding up the process of secularization of education. And much more that this country seemed to very badly need. Then in july of 1936, this was a great shock felt around the world because there was a widespread, extremely wellcoordinated revolt by rightwing Army Officers who called themselves nationalists. And very quickly emerging as leader of this group was a tough talking young general named francisco franco. Most of the spanish army went with this revolt. What did the spanish nationalists want . They wanted to restore the old spain, a spain where power was held by the big landowners, the major industrialists. Education would be given back entirely to the Catholic Church, and the army would remain supreme. The it would be a mill it would be a military dictatorship. There would be no free press, no democratic trappings of any short. And a very quick indication of what the real politics of this revolt were came because immediately jumping in to help franco and his nationalists within a matter of days were adolf hitler and benito mussolini. Both sent planes, pilots, tanks, tank drivers, military advisers, military equipment of all kinds. And mousse mussolini, before long, sent 80,000 Ground Troops as well. The spanish civil war had begun. The war was basically between those forces and the quite ragtag remaining armed forces that stayed loyal to the elected government of the spanish republic. Now, something that made this different from any war that had been seen in europe in quite a long time was the way Political Violence was deliberately targeted at civilians. In areas that the nationalists controlled or took over, there was widespread targeted killing of any civilians who had been in any way part of or known supporters of the previous elected government of the spanish republic. 150,000 civilians were killed in nationalistcontrolled territory during the war and another 20,000 afterwards. There was a lot of violence on the other side as well. In the spanish republic, mobs killed an estimated 49,000 people who were presumed or known to be sympathizers of the spanish nationalists, and nearly 7,000 of them were members of the clergy. The Catholic Church being so identified with big landowners and the nationalist movement. An extremely violent war that was very violent in other ways as well. Conditions in the prisons, especially those maintained by the spanish nationalists, were absolutely abysmal. Their emblem of a yolk and arrows was brand on the breasts of dissident women. There was a kind of almost medieval level to this cruelty that really had not been seen in this venomous a way in europe on such a large scale for quite a long time. Now, as conflict developed and spread quite rapidly with more and more of spain falling under the control of the nationalist rebels, the elected government of the spanish republic pleaded desperately with the major democracies britain, france, the United States to sell it arms. And, actually, republican spain had the money to buy those arms because they had the worlds, they had the worlds fourth largest gold reserves. During world war i when all the other major nations of europe had been spending themselves into debt fighting that horrible war, there had been an economic boom in spain. But all of the democracies refused to sell arms to the spanish republic. In the United States, isolationism was very strong. This was the period of america first. Very strong sentiment against being drawn into anybody elses civil war. Similar feelings really ran through the governments of britain and france. Within a few months, the rebel spanish nationalists controlled half the countrys territory with a continued very, very thick stream of help from hitler and mussolini. Eventually at that point, the fall of 1936 about three months after the revolting had began the only government that stepped forward to sell arms to republican spain was not another democracy. It was Josef Stalins soviet union. And although it was not widely known at the time, stalin demanded a lot of things in return for selling arms to spain. Namely, high positions for spanish and soviet communists in the governments Armed Forces Leadership and in their security forces. But stalin did something more important as well which is that he passed the word to communist parties around the world wanting to take advantage of this enormous groundswell of enthusiastic support for the spanish republic, pass word to the worlds communist parties begin recruiting volunteers to fight for the spanish republic. And these volunteers were what became known as the International Brigades which im sure youre familiar with. Eventually, 3540,000 people from more than 50 countries went to spain to the fight for the spanish republic. They were the shock troops of this war. They were thrown into the very toughest battles, and the men in those International Brigades died at three times the rate of other soldiers in the spanish republics army. Among them were some 2800 americans. Most, though by no means all of them, members or sympathizers of the american communist party. It was by far the Largest Group of americans ever to go and fight in somebody elses civil war. Why did they go . Above all, i think it was a sense that the greatest threat that the world faced at that moment was a rapidlyexpanding fascism, something that sooner or later would threaten all countries. One american volunteer, maury kolow of new york, said at one point for us speaking about it afterwards, said for us it was never franco, it was always hitler. Another american volunteer who was actually a 23yearold rabbi wrote to his mother from spain several months before he was killed there saying that if he hadnt come, forever after he would ask himself why didnt i wake up when the alarm clock rang . Now, one thing that made me interested in writing about this subject was that i knew half a dozen of these american volunteers. All 30 or 40 years older than me, all of them dead now. So here they were, fighting a brutal war, really in many ways the first battle of world war ii. After all, where else in the world were americans in uniform being bombed by nazi pilots four years before the world, before the United States entered world war ii . On one side you had the Spanish Republican Army and these international volunteers. On the other side, heavily supported by hitler and mussolini, you had the spanish nationalists. And by this point, hitler was realizing that spain was a priceless opportunity for him to try out the weapons he was planning to use in the larger war to come which, of course, he was already busily planning. And all of the most famous german weapons of the Second World War had their first combat trial in spain. The Messer Schmidt 101 dive plane, the. 88 millimeter artillery piece, all of these were first experienced and were first experienced by americans as their targets during the spanish civil war. Now, when you have a patch of history like this, a piece of history that is so colorful, so dramatic, so tragic, a book almost writes itself. And sometimes i felt as if i was steering a ship through this extraordinary set of waters, and the only decisions i had to make were who to take onboard. In other words, through what characters am i going to try to tell this story. Because i like to try to bring a piece of history alive by telling it through the lives of people who lived through it. And it makes the story all the better, i think, if when you asimilar bl a cast to assemble a cast of characters like this, you can find people who knew each other, whose paths crossed, who loved each other or who hated each other or were bitter rivals. And i found some of all of the above. And, of course, as a historian you cant invent anything, so you have to find people who left a record; memoirs, diaries, letters or other documents. Do historians a favor, by the way, and keep a diary. [laughter] these are just gold mines when you find them. I dont have time to tell you about all the characters in the book, but here are some of them. I wanted to show what the experience of some of these american volunteers were like, so i followed several of them. One was a young man named bob merriman who became one with of highest ranking americans in spain. Partly by accident. Because when he had been a college undergraduate working his way through college at the university of nevada at reno, he had discovered that you could earn an extra 8. 50 a month which was a lot of money in those days by taking rotc. So he did so. And that meant that when he got to spain a few years later, he was one of the very few americans who had any kind of military training at all. His wife, marian, also went to spain. She was the only American Woman in uniform at the International Brigades headquarters where she worked as a clerk. I had known in choosing to write about it, id known that bob merriman had been a graduate student at berkeley for a few years before going to spain. I was astonished in going through their letters to each other to discover that they had lived only a couple of blocks from where i do today. And every time i walk from my house to the graduate school of journalism at berkeley where i teach a class, i walk past the building where they lived. After having been in spain almost a year and a half, he went missing in action. And his body was never found. And she didnt know exactly how he died, because it was during a chaotic retreat. 49 years after his death, she got a letter from a spanish soldier. Now i can tell you, i was with your husband when he died. And heres where it was. In writing the book, i went to spain, and i went to the spot where he was last seen alive. I was intrigued by bob and Marian Merriman because i found them highly simpatico people that met them in this period, and there are abundant records from all sorts of people. But i was intrigued by them. In this respect they were typical of many, be not most of the americans who went there at that time. I wanted to follow a few other volunteers as well, and one of them i picked because he was distinctly noncommunist. In fact, he wrote quite humorously that he felt communists always acted as if they had the correct answer for everything and had no sense of humor [laughter] and that if you made a political joke in the communist meeting, it was treated as if you had farted in church. [laughter] but he appreciated that the communist party was, were the only people organizing on a large scale to send volunteers to spain, so he went and fought with them. His name was pat gurney. He was actually british, but he fought through the war in the american battalion and was a very shrewd and thoughtful observer of what he saw. When should i worry about that sound . [laughter] okay. When at one point he was wounded, he was sent to the American Hospital and fell in love with an american nurse, toby jenski, of new york. Its always fun when you can reconstruct a love affair. In this case, we have letters from her by the way, keep your letters, especially your love letters. [laughter] future historians, doing them another favor. We have letters from her, we have a memoir from him, we have an account from somebody who knew them both well there who said things didnt happen at all the way he described in his memoir. [laughter] so its wonderful fun trying to put these events like this together from multiple sources. Another type of character i was interested in were american journalists who covered the war. War was the war was a huge story. During the almost three years that it raged, there were more than a thousand front page New York Times stories about the spanish civil war, more than on any other single subject whether the reelection of president roosevelt, the toll of the Great Depression, the rise of hitler, anything else. There were nearly a thousand foreign correspondents in spain at one point or another during the war, not just from the United States, but from many other countries as well. Now, i usually like to avoid writing about people who are already well known, but if youre writing about americans in the spanish civil war, you cant avoid the figure of ernest hemingway. He was there so much of the time. He wrote dispatches for the north american newspaper alliance, a syndicate of 50 newspapers. His arrival in the country itself was a news event that other reporters reported on. Such a great writer and such an obnoxious human being. [laughter] so hes in the story seen as much as possible through the eyes of some of my other characters. I also got fascinated by a pair of New York Times correspondents. The times covered the war very thoroughly from both sides, and on the republic side was a man named Herbert Matthews, very well known correspondent. On francos side was another corps ponte who had priestly been a previously been a colleague of matthews in the Times Paris Bureau named william p. Carney. Each of them was a passionate devotee in his side of the war, completely blind to its faults. Each of them passionately partisan. And carney actually later became a paid lobbyist for francos nationalists in the United States. They hated each other, and they traded barbs in print in this very restrained timesian way where, of course, queue cant name who you cant name who youre elbowing, but you can sort of trace some of these elbow jabs going back and forth. I ended up feeling that the best american correspondent on the scene by a long shot was not one of well known ones, not ernest hemingway, not Martha Gelhorn, but a 26yearold woman named virginia cowells who is one of the very few of all of these journalists whose book on the subject is still well worth rereading today. 26 years old, never went to college. Very shrewd reporter with an eagle eye for humbug. Reported both on the spanish side for the republic and managed to get into nationalist spain and report for that side even when the nationalists worked very hard to keep out anybody who had once reported from the republic side. So through her eyes, i can use her to sort of give a picture of what life was like during nationalist spain during that period. Now, i was interested in journalists because ive done some reporting from overseas myself. On a couple of occasions from conflict zones. And one thing ive noticed about reporters in such places is that they tend to travel in packs. They practice, they we practice a kind of herd behavior. Reporters tend to keep a very close eye on what their rivals are reporting because nobody wants to get a message from home in those days it came by telegram, these days it would come by text message saying that a rival newspaper, a rival network has reported this battle or that announcement, and why havent we heard anything about this from you . So everybody was very carefully watching, you know, what were their competitors reporting. And this kind of herd behavior is reenforced, i think, when people are in dangering under and fire. You want to give your colleagues a helping hand, show them where the bomb shelter is and so on. The reporters in spain were mainly on the side of the spanish republic because the nationalists, through censorship and giving everybody a minder to follow them around on the nationalist side, quite difficult. And the reporters in the spanish republic tended to stick together. They stayed in the same hotel in madrid, they ate dinner together every night at the same table that was reserved for them in the same restaurant. And afterwards they repaired for drinks to Ernest Hemingways suite at the hotel, and you can find descriptions of all this in countless memoirs. Now, in this kind of situation the question for me becomes, what stories did the herd miss . And there were two big ones. In one case it went almost unreported by the foreign correspondents in spain at the time. The second case it went entirely unreported. And heres what the stories were. The first story was this when franco and his nationalists made their grab for power in july 1936, in much of the country that they did not succeed in taking over then, or particularly spains northeast, barcelona and surrounding catalonia, they were defeated not by low call army loyal army troops, but by hastilyorganized, badlyarmed militias that had been formed by leftwing Political Parties and labor unions. And having beaten back this coup attempt, these working class militias found themselves essentially in control of huge swaths of the country. Particularly barcelona and the surrounding area. And they carried out a social revolution without parallel in western european history. Workers took over factories including the ford and General Motors plants in barcelona which were converted to making homemade armored cars and other materials for the war effort. Peasants took over those vast estates. Trolley car drivers and Railway Workers took over the transportation system. You can see pictures of locomotives with the, you know, initials of the Anarchist Trade Union on the side of the locomotive. Waiters took over restaurants. The ritz hotel in barcelona, the fanciest in the city, waiters, cooks and busboys took over the dining room and converted it to peoples cafeteria number one for the poor. [laughter] most of these folks were driven by the anarchist tradition which was something very strong in spain even as it had gone into eclipse just about everywhere else in the world. The foreign correspondents virtually entirely ignored this story. They were too busy competing with each other covering the battles, especially the siege of madrid. So how to portray all this. I have decided to portray it in the book through the eyes of two american eyewitnesses who saw the whole thing. They were a young couple who were in europe for all things on their honeymoon. Lois and charles orr. Lois orr was 19 years old. She was a student at the university of louisville in kentucky. She had married or an economics instructor at the university earlier in 1936. They were honeymooning in france and germany when they got word of this remarkable social revolution that had happened simultaneously with the military coup in spain. They were both leftists but of a very independent, antistalinist sort. Lois, who was very much the live wire of the two, said to her somewhat older, somewhat stockier husband stockier husband, we have to go there. They hitchhiked to barcelona arriving two months after the start of the coup and worked there for ten months. Lois wrote the most extraordinary series of letters home during that time. And then later spent much of the rest of her life writing and rewriting and rewriting a memoir about this period which she was never able to get published. But this bottomsup revolution was an amazing thing that attracted young idealists from all over the world. One, for example, who moved in their circles in barcelona was a, excuse me, a 23yearold german political refugee named villie brunt. Another they met for the first time this way. Charles orr was working in his Office One Day he was the editor of an englishlanguage newspaper put out by a small, leftwing Political Party that was aligned with the an artists anarchists and the buildings elevator wasnt working. The porter came trudging upstairs and said theres an englishman downstairs who doesnt speech spanish speak spanish, can i send him up . Charles orr said, sure, and up coming this tall, gangly, awkward, stammering fellow who says that his name is blair, and hes come to spain to fight. And where should he go . And he, charles orr asked him what his skills were or and what kind of work hed done, and the man said hed published a couple of novels under another name which orr had not heard of and, of course, eric blair was George Orwell. And charles orr was the first person that he met in spain, and orwell spent only a week in militia barracks in barcelona before going to the front and subsequently wrote his remarkable memoir, homage to catalonia. The other big story of the war was completely ignoreed by the correspondents and, indeed, its been treated in a most perfunctory way, if at all, by historians since then. And heres what it was. Here were all these correspondents in madrid, the herd, writing for their newspaper all over the world, newspapers everywhere. And one of the things they wrote about was the experience of being in the first major European Capital to come under heavy, sustained aerial bombardment. Day after day they looked up, and they saw those vshaped formations of hitlers bombers in the skies above madrid. And they never asked whose fuel powering those bombers. Because, of course, modern armies run on gasoline, and diesel fuel and aviation fuel. They never asked. It should have been an obvious question because nationalist spain had no oil. Hitler and mussolini which were supporting it or were oil importers, not exporters. It would have been very difficult and expensive for them to supply franco with all his oil. What was the major source of oil in the world at this point . It was the United States. Especially texas. As it turned out, general franco was getting most of his oil from texaco which had a ceo at that point, a man who was basically a fascist sympathizer. He not only supplied franco with most of his oil throughout the war, but he violated u. S. Law in several ways by sending it to him. American law said that anything traveling to a country at war could not travel on american ships. Nationalist spain had no oil tankers, so he loaded the oil onto texaco tankers at the texaco pipeline terminal in port arthur, texas, and off it went to spain. And at sea the ships were ostensibly bound for rotterdam, antwerp, amsterdam. At sea their captains would open sealed orders redirecting them to ports in nationalist spain. And that was the first violation of u. S. Law. Second violation was u. S. Law said that you could not supply goods to a country at war on credit. Nationalist spain had no spare cash. He said, thats no problem, you can pay us when its over. And he did something and he did two other things as well. He gave franco the oil at a huge discount, something he never told texaco shareholders, nor as far as we can tell by studying minutes of the boards of directors meeting did he even inform his board of directors of this. And only in recent years has it come out through the work of a spanish scholar who very generously shared some of his documents with me that rieber provided an additional help to franco as well. Heres what it was. Texaco, being a major Multinational Oil company, had in ports all over the world installations, tank farms, offices, agents, insurers and so on. A worldwide network. Rieber sent word out to all of these people, send us immediately, as you get it, any information you have regarding tankers heading for the spanish republic. This information was then immediately passed on to the National High command where it was used by bomber pilots and submarine captains looking for targets. Because, of course, this lifeline of oil to the spanish republic was essential, it was highly targeted. 29 oil tankers going to the spanish republic over course of the war were sunk, damaged or captured, and in at least one or two cases, we know that that was done with the help of information from texaco. History books will tell you that the United States was neutral in the spanish civil war, but texaco was not neutral. So these are some of the Untold Stories of the spanish civil war. I think its enough. I hope ive whetted your appetite to meet some of the people involved in this book. Id be glad to hear your comments or questions. But, actually, before we do that i have a question for you. Anybody here have a relative who was in spain at that time . Yeah. Just tell us who and where they were . My uncle, mark strauss [inaudible] he was a young physician, and his brother, my other uncle, union, led the Workers Union and raised money for the first ambulance for the american lincoln brigade. And mark strauss drove that ambulance. Wow. [inaudible] astounded having read john mccains oped in the wasnt that amazing . [laughter] because when mark came back, he was denied hospital privileges and was really discriminated in a lot of ways. The whole family was involved with the joint antifascist refugee committee. I have letters okay. Anyone else . Just quickly. [inaudible] your father was an american volunteer . [inaudible] he was a medic. And he knew nothing about [inaudible] [laughter] he said one time he came upon this injured man, his guts were all hanging out, and he says he put em back in, and he heard the guy lived somehow. [laughter] somehow he made it work. I dont know how. But he had an antidote that he said the language, the international because there were all these countries that were there, the international the language that they used to be able to communicate with the other countries yes. Spoke of that, yiddish being [inaudible] yeah. I was born in spain in 1932. You were born in spain in 1932 . Andlied in spain throughout and lived in spain throughout the civil war. And you lived through the civil war. And because i was a child, didnt suffer as much as other people would have suffered. But i have very vivid memories of the [inaudible] i have some comments if you would allow me to make actually, you know, i should ask if anybody else would like to answer that question. Why dont you get in line to the microphone will pick it up, because i forgot that were supposed to say everything into the microphone so that cspan which is filming this can hear our response. Not very many still alive. Thats right. [inaudible] [laughter] this microphone over here. [laughter] you want to talk . Go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to mention one thing. First of all, your review was fantastic, and im going to read your book in great detail. The one thing i would like to mention is that the reason that some countries like france, the United Kingdom and even the United States did not participate immediately and remain neutral is because they were shocked and afraid of the extreme leftwing movements in the immediate weeks and months of the civil war. What you have mentioned of catalonia with the anarchists, that was probably the most significant one. But what happened is that they wanted the revolution now whereas the rest of the republic really wanted to win the war first and then go to revolution later. All right. So this is the background. I submit that the republic should have won the war, but they didnt. And they didnt for two reasons primarily. One is because instead of having an organized forces that would fight franco, instead of that, they had all these militias. All of them run by different leaders and so forth. And so that was one thing. The second thing that is really even more important is that eventually the republic side falls into complete dominance by the soviet union. And they send their people to infiltrate the military and become the real leaders of the military. They deposed [inaudible] more in favor of stalin. So the whole thing was just [inaudible] but stalin had this system of distrusting and fighting among themselves and so forth. And that created such a disarray among the republic military that i think that was probably the most important factor by which they lost the war. They should have won it. Okay. [applause] thank you. I, there certainly was disarray on the republican side. Theres no question about that. I guess i would question myself whether that was the real reason they lost the war. I think the reason they lost the war is that they were up against an enemy that was receiving a huge stream of arms from hitlers germany, mussolinis italy which, as i mentioned, sent 80,000 Ground Troops as well, and the western democracies did nothing. Initially, the position that it was disarray on the republican side which caused franco and the nationalists to win, George Orwell took that position when he wrote homage to catalonia. Five years later he changed his mind, and he said the course of the war was decided in london, paris, berlin, and he should have added washington to the list. I think those were the, that was the real reason for the loss of the war. Yeah. My name is chris, and my father was a reporter for the New York Times. And he spent six months in spain. What, in what years . 38. 38. January to june. And he saw a lot of conflict. And he got to meet franco a number of times. He covered the franco side. Uhhuh. And Herbert Matthews covered the loyalist side. But they knew each other wellment and my father knew hemingway, and he gained a great friendship with Martha Gelhorn and saved her life a few times, because she was reckless. Married to hemingway, she had to be. Thats true. [laughter] anyway, whenever he was in a battle zone where there were american volunteers captured, he made a point to have them rescued because they were going to be shot. Thats true. They were. Outsiders, many were naive. They were cannon fodder. And he actually saved milton wolfs life once who became head of the Abraham Lincoln brigade in new york. Thats right. And head of the Abraham Lincoln battalion in spain. Yeah. And one last story. He was, he saw a battle, and they captured ten american Abraham Lincoln people. And the captain who liked, the captain of the spaniards who liked my father a lot and knew he was close to franco said you pick five to live. Wow. And so what my father did, he interviewed them thoroughly. And they thought, oh, im going to be in the newspaper. And the ones he saved were the one young ones who hadnt seen any battle. But there were two that were pretty bad though. They were thugs, and they had done a lot of destruction. And, essentially, the questions he asked is what battles have you been in, and when they said i was in this one or that one, he knew they were atrocities, he made sure they were given up. But one of the people he saved, he was very proud of, it was a young jewish medical student who had gone over to spain as an adventurer. He saved his life. He ended up back in spain, repatriated. He then, this young medical student then got on a merchant marine ship that was actually torpedoed off the coast of africa. He was the only survivor of the torpedo ship. He had enough of war. He goes back to columbia, becomes a doctor and delivers over 10,000 babies. Wow. And my father read his obit in the washington post, and my father said thats the best thing i ever did in the war. And thats a true story. Good for him. Good for him. Thank you. Thank you. Id be interested in hearing about some of the obstacles you faced collecting your research materials. Problems getting access to letters that clearly were no longer in the possession of the people that held them and those kinds of things. Well, actually i didnt want run into i didnt run into a lot of obstacles maybe because there is such rich material in this period that when a pathway was blocked here, i could very easily find someone else to focus on. Of the 2800 who went, there are diaries, letters, documents of some sort and probably more than 250 of them. Most of which are in the library at new york university. To have that many survivors leave materials behind that you can work from is a gold mine for a historian. The long kind of think that i wish i had found more of an didnt was records of some of the americans who did not fight in the International Brigades but fought in a militia unit. There is an american in new york who is standing next to orwell in the trenches when he was shot. His unit had an american dr. Unfortunately no papers from either of these folks are the other handful of americans who were there at the time had survived. Journalist tend to keep everything so there was a lot of