The one positive development ive seen so far and it is not a breakthrough yet is the fact that china is now involved. China has much more interest and stability in afghanistan than it ever did before partly for economic reasons because they want to develop minerals there and so on. But also because theyre worried about islamic extremism coming across the border into western china. China is one power that has influence over the pakistanis. That more influence over the pakistanis and we do. They are the ones leaning on the pakistanis to try to being the taliban and to the peace table. Theyve offered host talks. Its going to be a long long process but they sustain that pressure, we coordinate with them and its important to remember their tension between the u. S. And china in the South China Sea over trade another issues. Its important important to remember the big picture too. We need their help on north korea and on afghanistan. So even as we compete with them in some areas we have to work with them and others. So i do not it is paid a breakthrough anytime soon, but it pakistan and china keep pressuring them, if the afghans can hold their own at least if they keep losing territory from the taliban and theyll have less incentive, but if they can hold their own maybe well get to a point where you can bring them in. What an agreement will look like i dont know. You obviously have to preserve the liberties that have been created in afghanistan. Nobody is going to get those up now. See connecticut back to the taliban and a spray but theres going to have to be some part of the solution eventually. Just as a followup to to this, do you think the american presence helps or do you think if you left the countrys there was strike a balance within themselves . I think were still needed there now. I think the afghan army is not able to hold its own against the televangelist out the are logistical help and intelligence. I think our presence there, and we cannot solve this for them, sending more troops, i dont think there is a search that can happen the way did in iraq that will turn things around. But nasa dont think we should necessarily rush to draw down to zero there. You recognize someone in the back . Was in the back . Go ahead. Youre such an iconic figure for americans and indians as well, can you talk briefly about anything, how your perceptions may have changed in the writing of this book and i know can you talk a little bit about this, were you surprised today think that you learned about gandhi and how that might affect our memories of him . I really was. Its interesting, you have to write about him carefully obviously. Especially for an indian audience but gandhi was much more of a politician then people give him credit for. He was seen the movie, it seems like a serial, saintly figure that spouts proffers that sound great and is for priests and so on. And he hates violence. He was a very shrewd politician. He used nonviolence against the british because it works. He knew that the indians did not have the weapons to challenge the british army. This is the advantage they had over them. He had Great Success in the 20s and 30s. But, he he was also fairly pain man. He was surrounded by admirers and others telling him what a great person he was and how infallible he was. Even even indian leaders like nehru coming to him for advice. So thats a couple things. And he never understood the way muslims like jenna saw him. He thought, im a p person, have no have no prejudice i have nothing against muslims, course they must embrace my message. He cannot understand that for many muslims they would see gandhi dressed up like a hindu, holding prayer meetings, having hindu chance and so on, stories and and the parables he used were all hindu parables using hindu gods. He never understood that image is projecting to a lot of muslims was frightening. They saw him as a religious leader not as a secular democrat. Then he also did not understand the impact of his words. By the time partition came around he was in his mid to late 70s and he was a little, i dont want to use the word senile but he was not as sharp as he had been before. But nobody around him would tell him that. Everybody would still act as if everything he said was gospel. So he would. So he would do things like when these riots were starting to spread there were reports and rumors coming in her rise and fall in eastern india and the rumors were that muslims were going to massacre hindus and raping window women and he brought this up at a prayer meeting in new delhi and was trying to say do not retaliate, do not use violence, dont fight back, instead, for all of the tens of thousands of hindu women were at risk of being raped, you should kill yourself instead. He had not thought this through it all. Boy this message message was heard on the provinces was, hindu women are being raped. There are local politicians at a much lower level who use this message and rallied hindu mob same come limited massacre of several thousand muslims. Something that Muslim Leaders like jenna blame gandhi for inside your spouting this stuff and its causing violence. He wouldnt not acknowledge that. He thought his spirit was pure, his intentions were good, and they were but he did not understand the impact of his words. There are also times this compromise that i mentioned, he fought against it the most and dragged out the negotiations. I think if they had accepted much earlier as possible a compromise may have been hell. Moments of the process where he wouldve been good as a spiritual figure in a more figure but should have been involved in the politics because he found it very hard to make compromise. With the class of 1970, i was intrigued after watching the news for the last month that in the book jenna and nehru were very egotistical egotistical, narcissistic to some degree and seem not to catch onto things that a more practical or humble person might see. It just it just reminded me of today. Yes, there are some eerie parallels. These men were they had huge egos. Theyre great statesmen statesmen and in a way as well, part of that may be the reason why they rose to the top. You you have to have a certain degree of selfconfidence in order to do this. Remembers is a british system where combined with the indian feudal system where nehru went to a political rally, he was trying to bite worshipers. He he would give the speeches in english and talking about socialism and this and that, these farmers had no idea what he was talking about. They just knew he was this godlike figure who had come down from new delhi and was on stage and theyre just there to be in his presence. Just to listen to this group. They did not want to touch as feeder shake his hand or this or that. Again, again, nehru knew this was a danger. Its interesting about ten years before 1937 theres a younger man and was receiving all this and he wrote an essay that warred against the dangers of a leader like him becoming a dictator that letting the stuff go to his head and that the party needed to be wary of this in the country needed to be wary of this and not allowed to happen. He knew it it was a danger but he still let it happen. Jenna was the same way. It had been fighting for recognition for years and years and all of a sudden once he started promoting pakistan hundreds of thousands of people come to his rallies and he was surrounded by guards waving swords in uniform and he loved it. Now batten was the vein of all three. He counted the ribbon on his uniform and spent his summer when the death squads were forming certain look working out with the flags would look like that they would use on independence day. Kind of pomp circumstances why he was there. So you do have to worry, have your leader you have to have responsibility. You cant just let the stuff go. Two quick things. What i thought fascinated about how the normal folk did not want to leave and had an insight as to why there is such a deep feeling and secondly, the flipside of what really happened i had the two leaders the more religious maybe they wouldve had different perspectives and would not be so vain. Another another words in a sense their deep secularism which was not evident good that eventually led to the feeling and then thirdly as a sleep position, the two hours of sleep deprivation that he was legally impaired, he would be more than legally intoxicated by alcohol. Its a fascinating subject for us. How these World Leaders are making decisions will their impaired. He is not the last. So thats really cool think that you uncover for us. Working backwards it was fascinating to see just these guys did everything themselves. They never ran a government. Nehru had been a politician but really just a leader, street leader in the way. He had never been an executive or run anything. We try to run everything himself. The reason he the reason he only got two hours of sleep is because he was dealing with negotiations as would be no invitations to conference and when riots broke out and it came to his house and said there is a bridge, between all the new deli where refugees are coming across the bridge and are being killed when they come across because gangs are waiting for them. Nehru now is a Prime Minister 400,000,000 people what is what to do, he runs upstairs, gets out of his drawer a giant remarkable that blanches father and hadnt been fired in 30 years and he said were going to dress up like refugees, you and i we are going to go out there and walk across the bridge and when they try and attack as we are to shoot them. His friend said, no ivc or going to tell the police to go there and do this. That was the mentality that they had. The religious question is interesting. What made them or humble. He was humble and it would have been a problem in other ways after these riots broke out there is a lot of people who did not want muslims to say. Including nehru gandhi thought about this and said were going to be a multiethnic society. We are not going to allow this and was not a popular decision and thats why her s i forgot the first question. I think is over centuries. Religion was not all that organized. He had a village shrine or village mosque but if youre living in close quarters together you have basically the same food, some people dont eat beef or this or that, but use the same spices, you dress the same way. Your children will go to School Together and in many cases and i think most people generally want to get along. It did generally work. Muslims had legitimate fears politically about what happened but they were solvable. There couldve been a a compromise that would solve that fear. They had to acknowledge the pure first unaccepted there were real tensions to. Ive never been a part of this issue myself that theres another piece to it, have they been more religious but india is a very religious country. What these people were really like, i will not throw your dad into this conversation but they were these stories about mr. Nehru and others and everyone knew what these people were about. The other side of the point is they knew what these are. No one really believed jenna was its interesting in some of these local elections the muslim lake, organizers were gone try to get votes. One of them i found wrote back in new delhi and said its great that these people, they think jetta is this long bearded ima on and very religious. That was the image that theyre trying to pinpoint they had never seen him. So they were able to manipulate ordinary people. Lets go back to the audience please. You mentioned that one of the major flaws if not the major flaw of the bit that his role was that they exited to quickly and left a lot of details undone. Any other major flaws in hindsight . There were a bunch. I will will say though that i am less critical of the british that many writers are. Probably because i feel the indians and pakistanis wanted independence. They been asking for years. The responsibility was theirs to prepare for it. They were the ones that had influenced over these death squads. There were not ordering it themselves but at lower levels of their parties people were involved in procuring weapons. So is their responsibility to stop this before the violence really broke out. But it did a few things. In the long run they contributed to dividing these communities. In 19 oh nine they decided that they would create special seeds for muslims to run for legislature and only muslim could vote for those particular people. So then you had parties who were breaking along religious lines. They did this this to divide and weaken the opposition and so on. But i was earlier on. During world war ii there is a moment at which fdr in the u. S. Pressured the british very heavily in 1942 to give up india and granted so that they would join the fight against the nazis and the japanese. Churchill, singlehandedly resisted. The rest the rest of the government was ready to do this. But churchill was not. He threatened to resign if fdr kept pressing him. So they backed up. If they had intentions then i think there is no real momentum for pakistan in 1942 at all. You couldve handed power to unify government. The british wouldve stay. Nobody wanted to kick them on the middle of the on the middle the work. You would had a longer transition. And in addition to leaving too fast, they underestimated the threat of violence. Wasnt a surprise. The fourth item the poon job is sending daily cable saying this is happening, any anymore troops, and the more troops. Now im paper they created a peacekeeping force are supposed to to go to this province. But he wasnt good with details so he was busy drying his legs, this supposedly 50000 member army force that went there ended up being less than 2000 people with actual rivals. So they were they were not able to suppress the violence quickly. The only way to have stopped this wouldve been a massive application of force very quickly and they did not have the troops in place. That was the british responsibility. They are responsible for law and order up until that point. There were mistakes made, but i think its important for indians and pakistanis to take responsibility as well. Its too easy to go to india and pakistan today. Its far too easy for people to say its their fault, people to say its their fault, they did this to us. The british were not helpful in some ways but theyre not entirely to blame. So you have written a wonderful book, you do not have any limits to how many you sign per person do you . No. The more the better. Thank you for writing this book and thank you for the intellectual exercise, the time you spent connecting with our students, faculty in the classrooms. I want to congratulate you and thank you all for coming and best of luck. Thank you. [applause]. Hall. We took a tour. [video clip] welcome to the National Constitution center. We are the only museum in the country dedicated to the constitution. We are located in the heart of philadelphia. We have 3 main missions. We are museum where you can come throughout the year to see our amazing interactive expeditions, but we are town hall. You can find great programming about current cost of two National Debates and discussions. We are a Civic Education center. We want our content out to teachers and students. Today, i will talk about our museum. We are in one of the signature exhibition spaces called signers hall. This is the moment the constitution was signed. There are 42 statues in the room representing those that were still present and participating in the Constitutional Convention in september after the end of a long summer that basement in philadelphia working to create this document. You can really walk amongst the signers. You can touch them. They are lifesize bronze statues. We made them to be interactive. He is by far one of the most popular and favorite here ds and well loved he has been in the 13 years we have been open. Find out that not everyone at the Constitutional Convention was happy with how things ended up. That attendedmen at different points. Some left because they had other business. Some left out of protest. These 3 are called the dissenters. Andge mason, Randolph Albert jerry. They were here on september 17, but refused to sign the document because they felt it didnt do enough to protect the interests they had for the countrys future and their personal space. We have other famous people you may recognize. We have alexander hamilton, who was the only delegate from new york after the two delegates with him left in protest earlier. He was still here at the end and helped with the final crafting and signing of the document. We have james madison, the. Hortest delegate, only 54 they are all lifesize accurate depictions. He is the father of the constitution. He is the guy that came in with a plan. He set the agenda for the summer. He was the super influential person in shaping the final process. He took all of the notes. He left us what happened during the convention. And we have george washington. He is the father of our country. He was also elected president at the convention. He was the steady hand who was here all summer long overseeing the proceedings. And howhis gravitas much respect he had from his fellow countrymen to the proceedings. They would have to go out to the people to make their case to get them to support this new form of government. Visit you canyour be part of the story and add your name to the constitution. This is about bringing the past to life, getting it interacts with the past, and understand this Periodic Service of your cr satellite provider. If if your cspan watcher, check it out on the web at cspan. Org. Not on. Hello everyone. Good evening. I am susan and on behalf of our owners and our entire staff id like to welcome you to politics and prose. Before you get started, this would be a good good time to turn off or silence your cell phones. Also after the event if you do not mind helping us by folding up your chairs, we would be grateful. During a questionandanswer session we have a microphone 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 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 both here and at our three busboys and poets locations. We have great trips and classes as well. Im honored to welcome Adam Hochschild back to politics and prose this evening to discuss his powerful new book spain in our hearts which is a consideration of the perceived romance that attracted 2800 americans to spain, 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 Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell turned turned out to be morally complex and hocks child demonstrates the nuanced ways that was formed at the time that turned out to be the root precludes to world war ii. The book is getting great reviews including the New York Times which called his account excellent and evolving. He is 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 book. Hes also been a finalist for the National Book award and he won the Los Angeles Times book price and append usa literary award. We are honored to have him here to launch this new book. Please help me welcome Adam Hochschild. [applause]. Thank you susan. It is great to be here in this wonderful store. I. I know that if i lived in washington d. C. , i would spend so much time here they would have me arrested for loitering. Its also nice to see friends here from the world of journalism writing. Many of you in fact that it makes me fear that we are just writing for each other. I hope that is not the case. Anyway, its a pleasure to have a chance to tell you something about my new book. To begin, lets mentally run the clock back to 1930. The setting in which these events took place. It was a grim time here in the United States, the the Great Depression was taking a terrible toll. Roughly one quarter of the american working population was out of work. 34,000,000 americans were living in households with no cash income. Abroad, similar conditions and in the aftermath of world war i, some even even nastier things as well. Hitler was on the rise, finally came to power in germany 1933 was laney had been in power since the 1920s in italy. It was under the far right regimes with anti somatic, fascism was definitely on the rise. Oddly enough, in the 1930s and early 1930s one of the very few bright spots was spain. In 1931 centuries of monarchy recently interwoven in a period of military dictatorship came to an end, the king king left the country, National Democratic elections were held, real ones for the very first time. At last it seemed democracy was coming to a country that needed it. There was much work to be done. Education education up to this point had been in the hands of 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 holding enormous estates. Millions of us peasants had little or no land at all and worked as laborers. More than a quarter of the population was illiterate. Highest percentage in western europe. In early 1936 a small 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 one. So there were promises of further reform. Speeding up up the process of land reform for example. Speeding up the path process of secular education and much more that this country seemed to very badly need. Then, in july 1936 there is a great shock felt around the world because there is a widespread extremely well coordinated revolt by right wing Army Officers who call themselves nationalists. Very quickly emerging as legion of this group was a tough talking young general, named francis del franco. Most of the spanish army went with this revolt. What did the spanish nationals want . They wanted to restore the old spain. Spain was power was held by the big landowners, and the major industrialist, education would be given back entirely to the Catholic Church in the army would remain supreme. There would be a military dictatorship there be no free press, no free trade unions, no democratic trappings of any sort. A very quick indication of what the real politics of this revolt were came because immediately jumping in to help franco and his nationalist within a matter of days was Adolph Hitler and mussolini. Both sent planes, pilots, pilots, tanks, tank drivers, military advisers, military equipment of all kinds and mussolini before long sent 80000 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 anywhere that had been seen in europe and quite a long time was the way Political Violence was deliberately targeted at civilians. In areas that the nationalist controller took over, there is widespread targeting killing of any civilians who had been in any way part of the known supporters of the previous elected government of the spanish republic. 150,000 civilians were killed in a nationalist controlled territory during the war and another 20000 afterwards. There was a lot of violence on the other side as well. In the spanish republic mobs killed an estimated 49000 people were presumed or known to be sympathizers of the spanish nationalists and nearly 7000 of them were members of the clergy, the the Catholic Church being identified with the big landowners and the nationalist movement. An extremely violent world was very violent in other ways as well. Conditions in the prisons, especially those maintained by the spanish nationalists were absolutely dismal. Their emblem of yolk and arrows was a branded on the breasts of women, there is an almost medieval level to this cruelty that had really not been seen in this venomous way in europe on such a large scale for quite a long time. Has the conflict developed and spread quite rapidly with more and more spain falling under their control of the nationalist rebel the elected government of the spanish republic pleaded desperately with the major democracy, britain, france, the United States to sell arms. The republican spain had the money to buy those arms because 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 the horrible war there is 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, has is a period of america first, very strong sentiment against being drawn into anybody elses civil war. Similar feelings ran through the government of britain and france. Within a few months the rebel spanish nationalist controlled half of the countrys territory with the continued help with hitler and miscellany. Eventually at that time of the fall of 1936, about three months after the revolt i began, the only government that stuff or to sell arms to republican spain was not another democracy, it was Joseph Stalins soviet union. Although it was not widely known at the time stalin demanded things in return for selling arms. Namely high high positions for spanish and soviet communists and the governments Armed Forces Leadership and in their security forces. But stalin did something more important as well and that is he pass the word to communist parties around the world wanting to take advantage of this enormous groundswell of enthusiastic support for the spanish republic, half of the worlds communist party begin recruiting volunteers to fight for the spanish republic. These volunteers were what became known as the International Brigade which im sure you are familiar with. Eventually 3540000 people, for more than 50 countries went to stay to fight for the spanish republic. They were the shock troops of this war. They were thrown into the toughest battles and the men in those brigades died at three times the rate of other soldiers in the spanish republic army. Among them were some 2800 americans. Most, but by no means all of them were members or sympathizers of the american communist party. He was by far the Largest Group of americans ever to go fight in someone elses civil war. Why did they go . Above all i think it was a sense that the greatest threat the world faced at that moment was a rapidly expanding fascism. Something that sooner or later would threaten all countries. One american volunteered out of new york said at one point that for us it was never franco, it was always hitler. Another american volunteer who is actually a 23yearold rabbi worked with his mother from spain several months before his kill there say that if he had not come forever after he would asked himself why didnt i wake up when the alarm clock rang. Now, one thing that made me interested in writing about the 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 in many ways the first battle of world war ii, after all where else in the world for americans in uniform being bombed by pilate for years before the world and before the United States entered world war ii. On one side you have the Spanish Republican Army these international volunteers, on the other side heavily supported by hitler and mussolini you had at the spanish nationalists. 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 more to come which he was already distantly planning. All of the most famous german weapons of the Second World War had their first combat in spain. The 109 fighter plane, fighter plane, the dive bomber, the 88 millimeters artillery piece, all of these were first experienced or first experienced by americans as the target 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. Sometimes i felt as if i was steering the ship to this extraordinary set of water and the only decisions i have to make work for you to on board. In other words, through what characters am i going to try to tell the 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. It makes the story all the better i think info when you assemble a cast of characters like this you can find people who knew each other. Whos paths klos, who love each other or who hated each other, or who were bitter rivals. I found some of all of the above. Of course, has a historian you cannot invent anything so you have to find people who left records, memoirs, diaries, letters, or shop and other documents. Do historians historians a favor by the way and keep a diary. I dont have time to tell you about all the characters in the book but here are some of them. I wanted to show the experience of some of these american volunteers were like so i followed several of them. One was a young man named bob merryman who became one of the highestranking 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 or the next 8 and 50s ands per month which was a lot of money in those days, by taking rotc. So he did so that meant what he got to spain a few years later he was one of the very few americans would indicate a military training at all. His wife marianne also went to saint. She was the only american women in uniform at the International Brigade headquarters where she worked as a clerk. I have known and choosing to write about it ive known that bob was a graduate student partly for a few years before going to spain. I was astonished and going through the letters to each other to discover that they have lived only a couple of blocks from where i do today. Every time i walk from my house to the graduate school of journalism at berkeley right teach a class i walk past the building where they lived. He was a very poignant love story between the two of them. Theyre very much in love. She had first gone to spain to nurse him when he was wounded and then he recovered. He went back into action and she stayed there. In the spring of 1938 after having been in spain almost a year and a half, he went missing in action. His body was never found. She did not know exactly how he died. It was during a chaotic retreat. Fortynine years after his death she got a letter from a spanish soldier say, i had to keep my head down all of the years of the franco dictatorship, but now i can tell you. I was with her 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 marion because because i found them highly simpatico people. They are abundant records for many people, volunteers, journalist, u. S. Government officials, anybody you can think of finding this couple charming and charismatic. I was intrigued by them because they were true believers and communists. Never had a moment stout. In this respect there are typical of many if 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 felt coming this always acted if they had the correct answer for everything and had no sense of humor and that if you made a political joke and the communists meeting it was treated as if you farted in church. [laughter] but he appreciated the communist party was the only people who are organizing on a large scale to send volunteers to spain and so he went apart with them very his name is peg ernie, he was he was actually british but he fought through the war and the american battalion. He was a very shrewd and thoughtful observer of what he saw. When at one point he was wounded he was sent to the American Hospital and fell in love with an american nurse, it is 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. For future historians. We have letters from her, memoir from him, we have an account from somebody who knew them both well. Who said things did not happen at all the way he described in his memoir. So its wonderful to put these events like this together from multiple sources. Another type of character i was interested in where the american journalist to cover the war. The war was a huge story, during the almost three years that had raged there were more than 1000 frontpage New York Times stories about the spanish civil war. More than on any single subject. What the reelection of president roosevelt, through the rise of hitler, anything else. There were nearly 1000 falling correspondents in spain at one point or another during the war. Not just from the United States but for 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 and the spanish civil war you cannot avoid the figure of Ernest Hemingway. Was there so much of the time. He wrote dispatches dispatches for the north american newspaper alliance, his arrival in the country was a news event that other reporters reported on. Such a great writer conception obnoxious human being. Laughmac so he is in the stories seen as much as possible through the eyes of some of my other characters. I also got fascinated by a paraof New York Times correspondence, the times covered the covered the war very thoroughly from both sides. On the republic side was a man named herbert matthews, very well known correspondent, francos was another correspondent who had previously been a colleague of matthews in times, and william p kearney. Each of them was a passionate devotee on his side of the war, completely blind to its faults. Each of them passionately partisan and kearney actually later became a paid lobbyist for francos nationalists in the United States. They hated each other and they traded barbs and print in this very strained way in which of course you cannot name whom you are elbowing. But you can sort of trace some of the elbow jabs going back and forth. I ended up feeling that the american correspondent on the scene by a long shot was not one of the wellknown ones. But a 26yearold woman named virginia who is one of the very few whose book on the subject was well worth rereading today. 2626 years old, never went to college, very sure reporter reported both from the side of the spanish republic and managed to get in a report from that side even when that nationalists work very hard to so through her eyes i can now, i was i was interested in journalism because ive done some reporting from overseas myself. On a couple of occasions from conflict zones. One thing i have noticed about reporters in such places is that they tend to travel in packs. They practiced, we practice the behavior. The reporters tend to keep a close eye on how their rivals are reporting. There is saying that arrival newspaper of this announcement why have we not heard anything about this from you. So everybody was very carefully watching what the competitors were reporting. This type of behavior is reinforced i think when people are in danger and under fire. You give colleagues a helping hand, hand, show them where the bomb shelters and so on. Reporters in spain were mainly on the side of the spanish republic because the nationalists through censorship and giving everybody a mind to follow them around may be reporting quite difficult. And the reporters in the spanish republic tended to stick together. They stayed in the same hotel in madrid, they dinner together every night at the same table that was reserved at the same restaurant and afterwards they prepared drinks in his suite at the hotel and you can find descriptions of all of these in the memoir. Now, in this kind of situation the question for me becomes what stories did they miss. In one case it when almost unreported by the correspondence at the time. The second second case it went entirely unreported. Heres what the stories were, the first story was this when franco and his nationalists made their grab for power in july july 1936, in much of the country that they did not succeed in taking over, particularly spains northeast, barcelona and surrounding catalonia, they were defeated not by army troops but by hastily organized, badly armed militias that had been formed by leftwing political parties. Having beaten back this cooler tent the workingclass militias found themselves essentially in control of huge swaths of the country, particularly barcelona and the surrounding area. 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. Those were converted to making homemade 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 trade union of the side of the locomotive. They took over restaurants, the hotel in barcelona, waiters, cooks and busboys took over the dining room and converted it to peoples cafeteria number one for the poor. Most of these folks were driven by the anarchist tradition which was something very strong in spain, even as it has gone into eclipse just about everywhere else in the world. The other correspondence virtually entirely ignored the story. Theyre too busy competing with each other covering the battles, especially the siege of madrid. So, how to for trail of it. I decided to pretrade in the book through the eyes of two american eyewitnesses who saw the whole thing. They were a young couple who were in europe to do all of all things on their honeymoon. Lois and charles, lois was 19 years old, shoes a student at the university of louisville in kentucky. She had married an economics instructor at the university earlier 1936. They are honeymooning in france and germany. They got word of this remarkable social revolution that had happened simultaneously simultaneously with the military coup in spain. They are both leftist but of a very independent sort. Lois was very much the livewire of the two said to her somewhat older and start your husband, we have to go there. They hitchhiked to barcelona arriving two months after the start and worked there for ten months. Lois wrote the most extraordinary stories of letters home during that time. Then later they spent much of her life writing a memoir about this. Which she was never able to get published. But this bottoms up revolution was an amazing thing that attracted young idealists from all over the world. One for example who moved in barcelona was a 23yearold german political refugee named billy blood. Another they meant for the first time this way, charles or was in his office one day, he was the editor of an englishlanguage newspaper put out by a small leftwing leftwing Political Party that was aligned with the anarchist. The reporter went trudging upstairs and said there is an englishman downstairs who does not speak spanish can i sent him up . And charles said sure and up comes this really tall, gangly, awkward fellow who says that his name is blair and he has come to spain to fight and where should he go. Charles asked what his skills were and what kind of work he was doing and so he published a couple of novels under another name which he had not heard of and of course it was george. Charles was was the first person that he met in spain and he spent only one week in the barracks in barcelona before going for the front and subsequently wrote his remarkable memoir. The other big story of the war was completely ignored by the correspondence and indeed it has been treated in the most perfunctory way, if if at all by historians. Heres the point. Here all this correspondence in madrid, ready for their newspaper all over the world and one of the things they wrote about was the experience of being in these first major European Capital that came under heavy, sustained bombardment. Day after day they looked up and they saw those vshaped formations of those bombers in the sky above madrid. They never asked whose fuel is powering those bombers. Because of course modern armies run on gasoline and diesel fuel they never asked