Sentinel and political analyst for wt vv 5 in florida. s latest book the nazi titanic the incredible untold story of a doomed ship in world war ii recounts the littleknown tragic, sometimes surreal story surrounding the ss cap arcona, a luxury ocean liner built in 1927 whose scale rivaled the titanic. It stood in for the titanic in a propaganda film. And the devastation of the holocaust in astonishing and disturbing ways. Columbus dispatch writes a compelling book of the ship and passengers, set again in the context of the horrifying end of the war and almost forgotten subjects well worth bringing to light. We welcome its author tonight. Join me in welcoming robert watson. [applause] thanks for coming. At the conclusion of my remarks i will take questions on the book or anything else you would like to talk about. We tend to think we know all there is to know about history especially when it comes to momentous events like world war 2 run back or the holocaust. 7 decades since the holocaust, we have had great museums open in washington to the holocaust, World War Ii Museums, great World War Ii Museum in new orleans, countless thousands of books have been published. As a historian i know there is more we dont know then we do know even about events like this. There has been a remarkable job with interviews with folks who survived the holocaust, they taped thousands but there are at least 6 million voices that will never be taped was World War Ii Museums have collected tanks to howitzers but 60 to 80 Million People died in that conflict, the worst, bloodiest conflict in history and we have lost so much of that. I was always available a Great Library and Daniel Boorstin who had something to talk about, the survival of the unread. What does that mean . 99 of all the books ever written whether you are studying something to hundred years ago, 99 of everything written is gone, vanished, decomposed, lost, burned, destroyed on purpose. Whether we are going back 100 or thousand years what we are working with is less than 1 of the books that are written. If i spend a day or week or month with you there is no way i could write your biography. Not only are we losing 99 of the books that have been written but something i teach my students, a corollary is this. At least 99 of all the things that make us distinctly human, but put life and wind in the sales of humanity, things like love letters, recipes, musical scores, games children played, we have lost all of that. Throughout history most people were illiterate. Therefore the history that was written was only the 1 of the 1 . Paper or parchment, something to write with, they were prohibitively expensive and exceedingly rare, how could someone on the frontier have time means to write down something and how would they save it . It would decompose in a cabin. The majority of women from the beginning of time until now but with even today around the world were illiterate. They did not record their stories. History is his story. We dont see fit to record, save, and teach a lot of women versions of history. There is more we dont know than we do know. I was planning on writing a book about the last week of world war ii in europe. A third to half of them i never intended to write. As you do research you are finding something far better. I was going to write up a, last week of world war ii in europe because it was completely chaotic. The nazi commanders killed everyone, some holocaust concentration kids killed everyone, others opened the door and told people to run. It was chaotic. We pretty much lost, you have hitlers suicide on april 30th, the end of the war in europe a week or so later but as soon as the war entered europe, the pacific, the island hopping, dropping of the bomb to surrender the japanese and the marshall plan, the berlin airlift, the rise of the cold war, everything, such moment is events, we forgot what happened in the last week of the war. Most Holocaust Survivors dont talk about their experience. Not until the great book before Holocaust Survivors felt compelled welcome to share their story. We knew a father, uncle, grandfather or neighbor who didnt talk about it. Even if that is the war, the holocaust, there is more would dont know that we do know. What i wanted to do is tell that last week through the eyes and experiences of people in a very intimate personal way. I wanted to find one story of love, is one story of loss each day of the last week. Maybe there was a baby born two days before the end war. Maybe somebody got married today after hitler killed himself. Who was the last soldier to die in the war. While i was doing research i found a letter by the british major who says in the letter of all the horrors of the Second World War the one nightmare i will never forget that will disturb me for the rest of my life was when thousands and thousands and thousands of concentration camp prisoners died in the final moments of the war. I went what . I never heard of this. I called some holocaust scholars and said what event is he talking about to give is a dont know, must be a mistake, maybe he got the date wrong. I checked with museums and everybody went didnt happen. So what would you have done . Probably what i did, not write the article. The research took me to london. What happened was this event was real. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people perished at the end of the war and it appears the British Government were so embarrassed by what they did that they fueled the records until the year 2045, making it a 100 year secret. Happily some of those records have been released, i was given access to them. And here is the story. Germany, through much of the 20th century loved ships, germans, Companies Like hamburg, south america, these companies are the greatest shipping companies in the world. Shipbuilding in germany through much of the 20th century was more than ships, it was a culture, like cars in the us and 50s and 60s in germany made these great ships. What happened after world war i, germany was severely punished after the war. In the 1920s currency in germany wasnt worth the paper it was printed on. One of the ideas in germany, they wanted to launch in the 20s the greatest ship since the titanic and they hired voss to bill bishop and studied the architectural plans of the titanic. How can they make it better to do the whole was more reinforced, more lifeboats, in 1927 they launched the new titanic. It was probably cap arcona. The ship looked like the titanic, almost as big, as opulence, 7 course dinners, walking tracks, pools, tennis courts, first class, second class, it was a remarkable should. The 20s and 30s it was perhaps the most celebrated ship afloat. Clark gable sailed on it, european monarchs sailed on it. I felt newspaper accounts from around the world during its 91 crossings of the atlantic. The most popular destinations were brazil, uruguay and buenos aires. Newspapers would say the titanic will be here in six days, 5 days, 4 days and people would go to the port like people here go to the red carpet, to see the whos who on the ship. That was the cap arcona. Rises to power in 1943 and it turns out hitler and some of his henchmen like Heinrich Adler of the gestapo and others loved big ships, hitler and nobles and the other nazis use the ship for propaganda purposes, announced to the world your titanic sunk, look at hours. They used it for propaganda purposes. By the end of the 30s everything changes. It is sent to the polish coast, the germans had seized poland in 39, renamed the town, so the nazi titanic air edits that roasting, took the persian carpets out, chandeliers, the grand stairway, and set it on the coast resting, painted metal gray. It was used as floating naval barracks and training platform in two things happened, the war takes a turn for the worse, thank goodness for the nazis but on the western front hitler planned operation sea lion to bomb and invade the British Isles and squadrons of the lift offer the 12th of try to bomb england but Winston Churchill immortalized the event, the southern front, north africa, general fox was driven out of north africa. The eastern front, operation barbarossa failed in the russian winter killed entire divisions of nazi soldiers. Hitler is in a panic, has a meeting with joseph nobles, they need to turn the tide of the war. Hitler assigns them to come up with some things so diabolical, so evil and alarming it will turn the tide of the war. What was that . They didnt know but they were working on it. We do know hitler and goebbels loved movies and that would be their inspiration. They loved hollywood movies even though they were illegal in germany, they had agents confiscated them. It was not uncommon for them to sit up all night watching movie after movie with translators and interpreters in their ears and debate for hours the movies, considered themselves connoisseurs of film. They were germanys siskel and ebert. They watched all sorts of films, the ones we watched the most were king kong, the 7 dwarfs, believe it or not, i cant make this stuff up, gone with the wind is another when they watched, they cried at gone with the wind. The movie they hated was casablanca. A propaganda film wrapped up in a good screenplay and good acting. They hated it because people didnt realize they were watching propaganda. Joseph goebbels made all sorts of propaganda films, the eternal jew, some of his propaganda films and were ridiculously juvenile. Almost every one of his propaganda movies have the same plot was an idyllic German Village until the jewish guy moved in and he is sort of like dracula. Always dark when he moves in at the music is ominous and forbidding. The people rise up with pitchforks and torches and drive the jewish guy out of town and everyone is happily ever after. You know you are watching propaganda. That is when hitler and goebbels came up with their idea. Goebbels is going to make the greatest of the film, the most diabolical effort propaganda film, so powerful it will turn the World Opinion against the allies and support the germans. They are watching the movie the tips them off after the movie instead of debating they sit and watch the credits roll and something done that goebbels is hitler that the director, producer, actors, cinematographers are all jewish. He takes over all the chairs in the room and that is when the come up with the idea. The film goebbels is going to make is the titanic. The story remains interesting today, 1000 years from now they will still be making without writing books about it. They are going to make the nazi titanic, thus the title of the book. They hire the most beautiful actresses and models, and entire military units to be the cast of thousands would like to Cecil B Demille epic, cast of thousands, greatest story ever told, unlimited budget, they cant find a director. Most of germanys great directors were in concentration camps. They find a guy named herbert who is sort of a spielberg. He makes movies like indiana jones, muscular, action, he marries action with drama so they hire him and he proceeds to make the most expensive film ever at the time. Fortunately for us everything that could go wrong with the movie goes wrong. It runs over budget, one of the actors gets pregnant by one of the leading men, german soldiers wreck the set. They want to fill the sinking of the titanic at night because the titanic forget might be germany is under mandatory blackout because of the inventory bombing. They made a huge ballyhoo like studio lights. Goebbels it hitler give an exception, letting them film at night, the set gets bombed. Everything goes wrong. Hitler is desperate, goebbels is desperate, the movie is over budget, something happens was he arrives onset and everything is going wrong. The director goes nuts, he curses hitler, goebbels of the nazi party, the gestapo is hiding onset, he is summoned to berlin and they tell him. They cant find another director to take his spot. They eventually do, shooting actors if they mistake you and getting the understudy. Finally the movie is finished. Before goebbels shows the movie to hitler, they wanted epic propaganda film that will change the war. They want to open a competition against, quote, jewish hollywood, create hollywood on the rhyme. Before they launch this movie goebbels sits and watches the film it is horrified. The director opposed the nazis. The movie is filled with antinazi subliminal messages. It is a film about a fanatical captain that drives the ship and innocent people to their death, to be a metaphor for hitler, the ship being a metaphor for nazi germany. Goebbels orders the film destroyed. Fortunately a few pirated copies survive, you can watch it today. Fast forward to the end of the war. In the winter of 1945 hitler issues his liquidation to create. All evidence of the holocaust, buildings, paperwork, prisoners would be killed. Heinrich himmler issues the story issuing a consummate in the retelling concentration camp confidants not to kill everyone, dont let the allies them. Hitler was to march tends of thousands of holocaust prisoners north to hamburg in North Central germany. Why does himmler want to save concentration camp prisoners . He wants to sail them to meet with eisenhower, montgomery, truman or churchill and exchange them for his own life. Tens of thousands of holocaust prisoners are sent by train, by barge and by foot. They put everybody on, what shifted a particular nazi titanic of course. A couple things happen. While they are marching folks there hitler learns of Heinrich Himmlers plan and sends two assassins to kill him. Himmler changes his identity and goes on the one. It within killed himself in the bunker, eva braun, his new wife, kills herself and he even told his favorite dog, so tilted 6 kids, not the commanders wife, tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners at the baltic and on board the ship, out of food, out of water, the war is ending, we are in a race for time. What happens in the final chapter is absent any nazi commander or two not the officials at the coast, the head gestapo official and carol coffman, the mayor, governor of hamburg. They come up with a plan, put everyone on that ship and we are going to think the ship, liquidate all evidence of the holocaust, take all the prisoners down with us and deny the allies getting out of yours nazi titanic. Somebody will die in this tragedy the world will forget the titanic and always remember the nazi titanic. We will sink it out the last second when the surrender agreement occurs making it even more symbolically evil. When they are ready to do that the british arrived at the coast, the sixth command, special forces, they make quick work of the nazis was the british along with scottish are there at the coast making quick work of the nazis. Concentration camp prisoners say you have to get folks off the ship. They have been on the ship for days without food or water, hundreds of dead bodies, right before the british go to the ship, they hear a deafening war in the sky, 6 squadrons, Royal Air Force bombers fly in and blow the nazi titanic out of the water. The nazis filled it with gasoline, magnificent explosion. It marks people over 3 km away, thousands die simply as the ship starts to lurch, the airplanes that blue it up are called typhoon bombers, not large like british lancaster, not a small spitfire or busting, almost a hybrid, carrying 20 mm cannons. After dropping everything they can they swing around any survivors in the water they straighten out. Killing copacetic the port. One of the pilots shooting bullets the time the other side of the tube of toothpaste, they were sawing people in half and british bombers from back, the toll was unimaginable. Shockingly some people made it out. A polish person survived auschwitz, he was blown off the deck of the ship. A german minesweeper, 42f in may in the final moments of the war. Folks who survived the holocaust for days without food and water sink or swim, suffered hypothermia, he is hanging on, the minesweeper comes by, they realize he is a concentration camp prisoner, throw him back in the baltic. He and 15 prisoners swim 3 km to the shore. There is a group of concentration camp prisoners freezing on the beach, they see a group of young hitler youth run out of the woods nearby and machinegun everyone. He swims into the water, comes back ashore and and 15 men are getting out, naked, freezing and trying to stand, they hear the words bandit, hands up. They turn around and there is a 10yearold hitler youth. He is ready to kill all of them, the british and scottish rite and kill the kid. He makes it to england and becomes a famous art dealer and they long life was there with two brothers from poland who survived auschwitz and the deaf march, they were trapped in a hold below deck. They had been under their for days without water, food or toilets living in half a foot deep of urine and human feces was the only one someone can sleep there is to sleep on the dead. They were trapped in the hold, the ship is rolling over filling with fire and water and when they thought they were going to die some of the prisoners rather than escape, holocaust prisoners went below decks to save their brothers, opened the hatch and lifted the brothers out, most people would have died. It reminds me of a scene from the poseidon adventure. They go down the hallway there is a wall of flames, the other way water coming in, they are done. Then they see an air vent, the brothers lived themselves up. The wall of flame shoots down the hallway until the rescuers. They make it to the deck. The nazi titanic is so big it is rolling over. It is bigger than the baltic is deep where it is so it never truly syncs. It was over like a beached whale, have underwater and have exposed. The brothers shimmy across the deck to the bottom but the fire is raging, the bottom of the steel deck is baking people alive. He says we have to get off the ship. He said i will take my chances was the give brotherly hugs. There is picked up by a german fisherman who needed to give his name because he is afraid of the nazis. There is no food but he wraps a burlap sack and lights the oven that the warmth of the fire keeps him alive. The door the bakery is kicked open and he thought he was going to die. They take him to a hospital and he puts on german soldiers, goes to the hospital and who does he see . His brother who survived on the bottom of the ship by sitting on top of the other dead folks. The british went out and picked them up, two brothers changed their name to jacobs and moved to boston and live a long life in the city, made an enormous amount of money dying a decade or so ago, jacobs and his wife still lives a great hunger in violinist, Itzhak Perlman virtuoso, he was on the ship and he too survived, moved to chicago and became the principal violinist, retiring as concert master. Francis akers passed away this summer. In conclusion just when you think you have heard all the stories, the incident i just described constitutes historys worst example of friendly fire, the british, constitutes one of the most tragic maritime disasters in history. It is the single bloodiest hour of the entire holocaust, the final tragedy of the war happening is the surrender was being worked out. With that, for the words of the holocaust, never forget, never again, that tells every story, the story of those who passed, those who survived and stories for the next generation. With that i think you. [applause] questions . Questions . What was the name of the german liner that was loaded with german refugees that was sunk by a Russian Submarine . There is another german ship, wilhelm, a liner equivalent to the cap arcona, equivalent to the titanic. In the final weeks of the war there was an operation the german navy put together, operation hannibal. It constitutes the largest marine if not evacuation period in world history. It is positively medieval. The nazis tried to evacuate the eastern front, march everybody to the baltic and the nazi titanic shuttling people to copenhagen, and it is filled with 9000 people, sunk by a soviet sub with 9000 people, and the worst maritime disaster. We dont need an exact number on the nazi titanic. I go through what records exist and offer a meticulous estimate and the best Case Scenario there were at least 4500 people on the nazi titanic, there were three ownerships next to it that went down, consider all the people who died that day, the whole larger event surrounding it the death toll could have been 20,000. What makes it tragic is they were innocent, they were holocaust prisoners who died by friendly fire. The soviet sub that hunted the wilhelm hunted the nazi titanic but the ship was so fast, a sub couldnt catch it. It was hit by torpedoes said today mine. It. Across the baltic, unstoppable. Who else has a question or comment . I will bring this to a close. Didnt say no . You and i could tell the difference between a battleship and an ocean liner but there were a couple factors. The british lost so many pilots but by the final hours of the war they were getting 19, 20, 21yearold boys giving them an expedited course in how to fly a plane and sitting in the cockpit. Most of the pilots were 19 to 21. A guy named Johnny Baldwin was the lead commander, he was 22. Most had very little training. The war is ending, these young boys were scared to death. They went in firing, not wanting to be the last casualty. There was a frenchman with freed french forces, flying with the Royal Air Force and offers insight into how to do this. Two days earlier they were flying a mission to the big port city of the coast and he says the nazis were still dug in and fighting. The airplane is bloodied to his left and right, they were blown out of the sky by nazis. He took so much shrapnel that the plane he was flying had a hole large enough to kick a soccer ball. I did not give a gone, he said. I was going to kill everything in the baltic. I can understand. About her likes to hit from high altitude, it was so cloudy and rainy that they, they managed to drop down below 2000 feet. They were vulnerable to antiaircraft and there was another factor. There had been a theory, are concerned that the nazis would try to escape to norway, to dig in, make one last stand. They would use the geographic isolation, mountainous terrain and cold weather and deep fjords of norway to begin. We, being the allies, photographed and observed nazi uboats making it into norway. They counted well over 100 uboats with what a lot of pilots thought that the nazis will try to flee like they did in that operation from the russians. If you are going to flee you need the biggest ship imaginable. A fast powerful ship, the nazi titanic. I have read their records which have been sealed for decades and they said they wanted the war to end so the nazis dont have a single ship available. Who can blame them . Having said all that i think i will close with this, there are some lessons. A couple people risked their lives and showed such heroism to save a few folks from the ship and from the water but one thing i want to do, there is a list of folks who are among the righteous, people who risked their lives to save jews in the holocaust, these do not appear i dont think we knew the story. I also believe not an apology because it was a war but a formal acknowledgment by the british would go a long way to the survivors and families of this horrible incident. Traveling around now, continue to do so providing as much data and information, letters and photos as i can to rabbis, Jewish Community centers to World War Ii Museums and scholars to tell this story. With that i will be available to sign books or if you want to continue the conversation i will hang out for a little while. Thanks to the Harvard Bookstore for the invitation, thank you, everybody. [applause] thank you for coming. Copies of the books are available in the next room. We will take the podium and be signing the books at the table, the line will form down the middle aisle. Thank you for coming. A look at some authors recently featured on the tvs afterwards, our weekly Author Interview program. The things i trust him on our his basic philosophy of putting america first, on trade, on immigration, on wars. He has made so many mistakes, little mistakes, but when the entire media and i mean the entire media lines up to crush them after the mexican rapist siege it took me a while to believe he was not going to back down. I started emailing with corey lewandowski, you might want to mention xyz, for probably 6 months if we can figure out how long it was, one of them would always be dont let him back down on immigration. After the muslim been i said he is not backing down. Afterwards airs every saturday at 10 00 pm and sunday at 9 00 pm eastern and you can watch all previous afterwards programs on our website at booktv. Org. Lisa lucas, what do you do for living . Guest executive director of the National Book foundation, the National Book awards program. Support different colleges and public events. Host when did you become the executive